God Exists

Pro’s case In accordance with the debate structure, I shall not defend my case in this round, and, instead, rebut Pro’s case. I shall not address the possibility of God since I don’t need to address that the uphold the negative side of the resolution. Thus, I shall only address the cosmological argument that Pro presents for the existence of God. Pro’s case is basically formulated as the Leibnizian cosmological argument, or the kalam cosmological argument, and can be formulated thus: 1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. 2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. 3. The universe exists. 4. Thus, the universe has an explanation of its existence. 5. God is the explanation of the universe’s explanation. 6. Therefore, God exists. A simpler formulation would be that of the kalam cosmological argument: 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe begins to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. 4. If the universe has a cause, that cause would have to be God. 5. The universe has a cause. 6. God exists. The justification of the first premise by Pro commits the fallacy of composition, viz. it assumes that since all objects that make up the universe have a cause, the whole universe itself must have a cause [1]. Things within the universe require causes since they are bound by physical laws, e.g. the First Law of Thermodynamics, and time. Sans physical laws and time, we don’t have any reason to believe things need causes, and the causal principle breaks down. As Sean Carroll notes, causality lacks coherence without natural laws and time. Without time, we lack time directionality, which is required for anything to coherently ‘happen’. Sans natural laws, we lack physical constraint and the unbreakable principles that require causality. An example of a violation of the causal principle would be in the zero-energy universe hypothesis, that suggests the net energy of the universe is precisely zero [2], allowing it to emerge from nothing [3]. The second premise is a core assumption of Pro’s argument--assuming the universe had a beginning. According to eternalism, the universe cannot have had a coherent beginning. Eternalism assumes the universe is a four-dimensional block, where the past, present and future are all equally real, and the passage of time is illusory [4]. Eternalism is vindicated by special relativity. According to relativity of simultaneity, a theory of special relativity, there is no absolute simultaneity, i.e. no two events can be absolutely simultaneous, and simultaneity is relative to observation [5][6]. This would mean that each observer has a personal ‘plane of simultaneity’, where variants in observation results in different perception as to whether events are simultaneous [7]. Each observer considers their set of present events to be a three-dimensional universe, but even the slightest movement of the head or offset in distance between observers can cause the three-dimensional universes to have differing content. If each three-dimensional universe exists, then the existence of multiple three-dimensional universes suggests that the universe is four-dimensional [8][9]. If the universe is four-dimensional, then the fourth spatial dimension is that of time, vindicating eternalism. Pro next provides various questions relating to the relation between time and space, etc. These ‘why’ questions do not vindicate God in any manner, thus are irrelevant to the resolution. Such questions are merely unanswered questions in science and philosophy--and God does not answer them either. 1. http://wiki.ironchariots.org... 2. http://aether.lbl.gov... 3. http://www.astrosociety.org... 4. http://plato.stanford.edu... 5. Ibid. 6. http://en.wikipedia.org... 7. Albert Einstein. Relativity - The Special and General Theory, pp 30-33. 8. http://www.jstor.org... 9. http://www.jstor.org...