God exists.

I refer my opponent to R1, when I wrote 'I will include evidence if my opponent wants an evidence-based debate’ to which they were despondent. To then, in R5 argue that I haven't used evidence is a pretty low move; you freed me from evidential BOP when you didn't clarify my response. Additionally, requirement 2 is the form of a disjunction, 'cogent arguments or evidence', meaning that by agreeing to the debate, all I had to illustrate was one or the other. The thing about cogency, persuasiveness, is that is cogent depending of what side of the debate you are on. I’m sure this is why you have been taking the authoritarian tone of voice in your writing, guiding the voters to how they must vote. To amend this in the future, if I was you, I would write ‘sound arguments and evidence’ if it is both of these things which you are asking for. However, this is all technical logical jargon; I know you’ve sought to be like a judge in this debate, but if you are going to be a judge (already presupposing yourself right), I have to call you out on your self-imposed judicial laws. You could have entered into this debate being much less arid in your approach. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------As you implicitly suggested the argument may be deductive, but the premises are inductive and rely on probability. Thus, the conclusion must be that 'God probably exists’. Definitions I now understand your position: from Nietzsche’s naturalism, you have then inferred that all things in the universe are physical. This is still however not the case and a very strange argument for someone who professes to be a property dualist. I know Descartes says that res cogitans is bound to res extensa, assuming a brain identity theory as you do (‘a physical brain’) which I think is erroneous given that our identity is embodied (unrelated I know). But, I refer you to the definition of ‘physical’: ‘of or relating to that which is material’ (http://www.dictionary.com...). Then, I refer you to some of the non-material things in the universe: dark matter, energy waves, empty space. These can still have power without having a physical substrate. Energy and light travels in waves, and is not bound to a physical material like atoms (except in cases where wave-particle duality is salient). Your real argument is that I haven’t proved anything outside of our universe. Things that exist can have power without material physicality. My definition of god, as I’ve repeatedly asserted, is as an ineffable power only with certain necessary requirements their existence is predicated on. I haven’t ruled out the possibility that god is physical, only that they are supernatural; I have claimed that god’s is transcendent, unknowable, and beyond nature but that they must have sufficient power to cause the universe if they are going to be the deist god. The American Dream has power but is not in itself physical. I can’t physically grasp the American Dream; yes, I may embody it and it may rely on this embodiment, but that fact in itself doesn’t mean that it is physical. What’s more, I’m not using a Nietzschean definition of power; if you read back, I conjoined his name with Foucault and Weber in an attempt to argue how your prior definition of 'power' was reductive. 2. The Case for God's Existence If you don’t mind, I will ignore the basic philosophy lesson you gave given that it was intended to coerce voters rather than argue about god’s existence. Though, I am concerned how you are encouraging them into a form of the McNamara fallacy here, making them judge from inductive statistics rather than the argument itself. ‘every premise of his argument has a probability of 75%’. From where have you plucked that number from for this purely rhetorical point? P1 The expansion of the universe has a beginning I have amended this premise to meet your pedantic standards. It would still require, as Aristotle puts it, a ‘primum movens’ (a First Cause) to occur. This we can call the deist god. An empty, capacious, existence—nothingness—prior to this event could of existed. I struggle to understand why you think that the universe (by which I refer to the expansion of material and energy) was caused by itself without being able to describe any mechanism to me by which it was done so. To not provide me this mechanism and then ask me to argue against it, is like arguing against a brick wall. The prior existence you refer to was nothingness and not what we commonly ascribe as the universe, that is the existence of something. The Big Crunch theory doesn’t state that our universe is eternal, only that it will condense after expanding thereby supporting the resulting notion that the universe has always done this (on what in laymen’s terms is an elastic band model of the universe). You haven’t argued that ‘there is no scenario on which the universe had a beginning’; you’ve stated it. It is not my place to provide evidence against the existence of which there is no evidence for (energy and atoms prior to the Big Bang). That would be like asking someone to prove why an imaginary colour doesn’t exist. What the evidence shows is that all universal reality can be reduced down to a singular regularity; where it originated from is unknown. All I’ve done is call this unknown an external reality to our caused universe that we can name god, if we want to. 'All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning' (Hawking)http://www.hawking.org.uk... a) Scientific probability is not determined by personal viewpoints and (b), the fallacy of composition, which I have already raised and dealt with.Since I wasn't arguing an evidential debate, I assumed my opponent had a basic awareness of the current scientfic positions, with the probability being stacked in my favour. I have deferred to Hawking to reiterate my position to provide a more authoritarian voice to reassert what I have already said. P2 Everything with a beginning, had some sufficient power to cause it Your response to P2 is nonsense. "everything with a physical beginning had a sufficient physical power to create it."; you again assume I’m arguing for a non-physical god, a false attribution and thereby a straw man argument. And, the principle we have evidence for is for it to be ‘caused’ and not ‘created’. When a domino causes another to move, it doesn’t ‘create’ that domino but it causes its momentum. Similarly, my definition of god set the Big Bang into motion and this was not done in ex nihilo but by a power which transcends this universe. Things are caused into being, they aren't necessarily created; in our universe anyway, by the first law of thermodynamics, there is nothing new under the Sun; nothing is created but caused. God may be caused, but this still wouldn't negate that they caused the universe being what I ascribe a pre-existence to the physical universe. P3 No cause is its direct effect subject to an A-theory view of time ‘Most physicists support the B theory of time.’ Weak. Appeal to authority/ majority that is completely without a supporting statistic or poll. Since you’ve done it, so will I. Most philosophers and intellectuals believe that the universe was caused under A-theory time by a deist god, so if you don’t want to be a fool, you’ll agree with them too. The past, present and future obviously do not exist all at once: time progresses. C2 (P4, P5) A deist god semantically equates to the sufficient power that caused the universe My opponent himself admits that "the universe could potentially have been caused by something that is not-god." He is clearly correct that this is possible, and he has presented no evidence to rule out the possibility. I used that in covering all potential outcomes; to say that the universe wasn't caused by the definition I have given, is absurd. Yet, because the pre-universe is transcendent, there is a small possibility that the cause likewise transcends us. Arguing against this would again be like arguing against an imaginary colour; there is no reference data to argue against and overcome. Hence, to ask me to do so is simply moronic. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Taking the position of a passive judge, my opponent hasn’t debated. He’s quite formally and quite aridly stayed back, making claims and not providing evidence for them, guiding people how to vote as if they couldn’t decide for themselves. I would recommend that if he wants to have more fruitful debates, for him to adopt an adversarial rather than inquisitorial style of debate.