Team Debate: God Exists

Clarification: Please see comments for Pro’s bid to change the format--we accept it, and shall only defend our own case in this round and crystallize. We thank Team Pro for such an excellent and wonderful debate. Note that we also concede the transcendental argument against God. Overviews Ob1: If even one contention of ours is upheld, and all of our opponent’s arguments are refuted, we automatically win the debate. Ob2: If team Pro has failed to objectively demonstrate even one property of God, they have not affirmed that God exists, thus have failed to fulfill BoP. C1) A caused universe is incoherent a) Requirements for Causality The metaphysical realm is, by definition, that realm that is not bound by any principles, i.e. transcendent to the universe. But, as mentioned, nothing can coherently ‘occur’ without some principles supporting their occurrence and binding it. Pro does *not* object to this. Furthermore, Pro asserts that there could be another form of ‘timeliness’ sans the universe--but that is ad hoc and highly unlikely. The universe is defined as “all of time and space, and its contents” [1]. Michael Zeilik and Stephen Gregory write, “[The universe is the] totality of time and space; all that is, was, and ever will be.” [2] Thus, all of time--i.e. any form of passage where events take place that is coherently referred to as ‘time’--is within the universe; thus, an additional form of timeliness sans the universe is highly unlikely. Pro’s argument is going from the frying pan into the fire. One could ask if the time before the big bang had a cause. If so, then he’s back at the problem he was at. If it was eternal, then nothing could’ve caused time and therefore God isn’t the cause of the universe. Pro’s own source used to say there could have been “time before the Big Bang” contradicts Pro’s position--the source says, “[L]ow entropy near the Big Bang is responsible for everything about the arrow of time” [3], and entropy began with the Big Bang [4][5]. Since Pro *concedes* that some form of timeliness is required for causality, and there was probably no form of timeliness before the universe, God probably can’t exist. Additionally, causality is not required. Pro argues that it’s incoherent to think of something coming out of nothing--but things aren’t formed ex nihilo because they are bound by physical laws, time, and the First Law of Thermodynamics [6]. An example would be a quantum fluctuation, for instance, with zero energy--a quantum fluctuation originates from either a false vacuum or a state of absolute vacuum, and is an annihilation of a particle and antiparticle, where the energy goes out of existence in a period of less than Planck time, unless the fluctuation’s net energy is zero [17]. b) Eternalism Pro states special relativity is compatible with presentism. Even if this were true, note that we didn’t just argue relativity implies eternalism. If you reread our argument you’ll see we argued quantum mechanics also implies eternalism. Nonetheless, the attempts to save presentism from relativity fail. Pro’s sources argue we don’t need to accept simultaneity with relativity. However, this doesn’t mean we can accept presentism. Eternalism doesn’t need absolute simultaneity, there are subsets of eternalism that accept an objective present, e.g. moving spotlight theory [7]. Presentism would still have no answer to the experiments that show time is relative. People who make this argument fail to understand that relative reference frames are a core concept in relativity itself [8]. There should be more of an argument than just “It’s possible there is an absolute reference frame.” The next argument they bring up is from a blog called “Soulphysics”. He argues that eternalism implies determinateness. Then shows relativity implies no event is determinate. This fails because, eternalism only implies determinate states of time, not determinate events within time. Events within time (length, time, speed, etc.) have indeterminate value, but the temporal state itself doesn’t. If eternalism did make claims about values of said events, it wouldn’t be a philosophical theory at all. Their next two arguments are essentially the same argument. They’re arguing it’s not reasonable to accept eternalism, because it seems like there is a passage of time. We have answered this somewhat in our first round. Time can be emergent. Within the universe people would experience time, but ontologically time would be static. This idea has been tested and verified by physics [9]. As we stated above there are eternalist theories that have a present and passage of time. Another explanation is that the passage of time is an illusion created by our minds. We know that the passage of time is mental, since we can change how quickly we perceive it via. drugs like psilocybin [10], and adrenaline [11]. It’s also dependent on how old you are, younger people experience time slower than older people [12]. It’s reasonable to conclude that the passage of time is a creation of the mind itself. By Occam’s razor, we should accept it. We have established the perception of time is mental, it’s simpler to state there is nothing more to the perception of time than proposing an actual passage of time that the mind interprets. The former posits no unnecessary entities. Next, they argue eternalism doesn’t imply the nonexistence of God. If they were correct, then there must be a way to save causation from eternalism. However, Pro doesn’t make an attempt to argue that. They imply there is without justification. They use a false analogy with a movie, but fail to see that the reason a movie needs to be caused was because there’s experiences prior to the movie. This is incoherent when applying the same standard to the block universe itself. Sean Carroll claiming he doesn’t know what happened before the big bang is irrelevant. Eternalism makes no claims about what was before the big bang at all. Just that all states of time exist. C2) Omniscience is an incoherent property Pro here claims God’s knowledge is based on present events. They’re basically claiming God’s knowledge is analogous to a Laplacian demon (a hypothetical demon which knows the present state of every particle in existence can determine the future and figure out the past [13]). Science shows this type of knowledge is impossible. Lord Kelvin pointed out that according to the second law of thermodynamics information would have to be lost eventually [14]. Furthermore, modern quantum mechanics is indeterministic, meaning knowing the current state of particles won't get you anywhere in the future. There are certain states which are formed probabilistically [15]. However, there is a philosophical problem with this. God can only have knowledge of future events in virtue of the present. Pro is arguing that God created the physical universe. Therefore, the first state of the universe wasn’t always in existence (otherwise omniscience would be incoherent), but this implies God wasn’t always omniscient. Prior to the universe, God would only know that he wants the universe to come into existence. If I am going to create a house and have all the blueprints in my mind, do I have knowledge of an actual house? Of course not. But omniscience entails that God should know everything--even that which doesn’t exist. For example, I’m not eating a pizza right now, so God can’t ‘know’ I am, but he is supposed to ‘know’ everything epistemically by omniscience. The same problem can be derived via. epistemic nihilism, and Munchausen trilemma [16], viz. nothing can be known for certain without being logically fallacious, thus ‘knowledge’, in nature, is incoherent. The above analogy simply conveys this. Thus the Laplacian theory of omniscience is false. C3) Non-cognitivism of ‘greatness’ Pro asserts that ‘greatness’ can be justified objectively, but have failed to specify what is considered *objectively* great. One, for instance, may assert that “he is great”, but one may disagree. It is incoherent to qualify something as ‘great’ objectively--any attributed ‘greatness’ can be challenged, and it is impossible to make an epistemic assertion that something is ‘great’. Thus, it is natural to conclude the term ‘greatness’ is inherently subjective. Pro also makes the claim that regardless of whether or not the ‘greatness’ of God has a standard, God still exists. But God’s greatness is by definition, thus is objective, so Pro merely begs the question, especially with the moral argument, which basically renders their argument thus: 1. If God exists, God is great. 2. God exists. 3. Therefore, God is great. But the second premise must hope to justify an objectively great God, which none of Pro’s arguments demonstrate--Pro’s arguments *drop* the property of ‘greatness’. In their last argument, Pro argues just because God is subjectively great, that doesn’t entail his nonexistence. They give the example with Gandhi. However, Gandhi’s existence is independent of greatness. Since God is ‘great’ objectively by definition, his existence is dependent on his ‘greatness’, and all his other properties. Here, OV2 can be extended to demonstrate that Pro has *not* demonstrated the property of greatness, thus they have not affirmed the existence of a ‘great’ God, so have not fulfilled BoP. Forward OV2, thus Pro have not fulfilled BoP with their arguments, while 3 of ours stand. Thus, vote Con. Thanks for a fun debate. Sources in comments.