The Cause of the Universe is Plausibly Personal if the KCA is True

Why The Cause Is Personal Personal Over Scientific Explanation: Extend Arguments Timelessness & Immateriality Here, Con only offers a taughtology, that since a supernatural-natural cause would be something, despite it's being immaterial, timeless and non-personal, then it would be something. Con's anti-dualism falls by the wayside since I showed it's possible that minds aren't dependent upon physical states given the coherency of dualism. Harris' quote only offers correlations of brain states with mental states, yet nothing is given as to how the latter is necessarily dependent upon the former to exist. Insofar as it is inexplicable how material bodies could act on minds to produce ideas, there's no reason why a substance-Mind is incoherent. We even identify with ourselves as minds, for the brain isn't jubilant or sad, the mind is!Origin of a Temporal Effect from a Timeless Cause Con misunderstands my bowling ball analogy, it only represented simultaneous causation. And Con made no argument for why a personal timeless cause can't exist in a timeless state. Then Con asserts that his alternative cause doesn't face the state-state/event-event causation dilemma. But even if it were true that I didn't show that a timeless agent can instantiate a temporal effect, it still wouldn't follow that his alternative cause is out of the dilemma. For we still haven't heard why the effect isn't co-eternal with Con's natural cause! Yet in agent causation, the agent freely brings about some event in the absence of proper determining conditions in a timeless state, and so therefore a timeless personal cause can clearly give rise to a temporal effect: for the cause and effect would be simultaneous, but not co-eternal, given volition. Lastly, Agent causation doesn't violate Occam's Razor since I've given 4 reasons for why agency is more plausibly necessary. Collective Properties of the Universe With the Hitchens quote, notice that he just asserts that the contents of the universe indicate "bad intent" sometimes, but never no intention. First, this point is irrelevant, we're not inferring the moral nature of the personal cause from the moral ambiguity of the world he created. Rather we're observing the fine-tuning of the created cosmos, and inferring that the best explanation of that fine-tuning is due to a personal designer. Thus Con's sloppy add on of the problem of evil is irrelevant, and has even been answered here, http://www.debate.org... Second, natural disasters of which Tyson bespeaks is necessary for our evolution and therefore our existence in the first place. Such anthropic conditions cannot logically count against the existence of agent causation. Darwin's colleague TR. Malthus also showed that extinction is also necessary for life. Malthusian Dynamics showed that since all populations tend to increase exponentially, then a struggle for existence is necessary if most populations are to be in equilibrium across the planet. Third, evolution is irrelevant to the fine-tuning argument. For if some of these cosmic variables were altered by less than a hairs breadth, there wouldn't even be matter let alone galaxies for life to evolve on. For a discussion on the evolutionary PoE go here, http://www.debate.org... Regarding Slezak's objection, he misunderstands that we're talking about the specified probability of a universe being life-permitting. As Dembski explains, the way we detect intelligent design is by the combination of high improbability + an independently given pattern. In the case of the universe it's the pattern of variables necessary for intelligent life + the improbability that these variables all occur by chance which indicates a personal design. Hume's quote is irrelevant to the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) on two counts. First since it questions premise one of the already granted KCA. Second, my FTA doesn't use inductive probability calculus, rather it's in the abductive form of the "Inference to the Best Explanation."[1]Regarding Observer Selection Effects (OSE), atheist J.L. Mackie explains that, "this is not a good reply… There is only one actual universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up are just right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is not made less surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one would have been here to be surprised."[2]So just because we observe a high probability of finely tuned values, doesn’t mean that therefore a finely tuned universe has a high probability to exist! How are OSE's even relevant to the FTA? If I observe that I'm awake at 3am, then therefore I am sometimes awake at 3am! Hence arguments with OSE's aren't always bad. For suppose that my net is bound to capture exactly one 10'-long fish. The hypothesis that this fish's parents were about 10' is preferred to the hypothesis that its parents were 1' if my net catches a 10' fish! "The fact that I couldn't have caught a fish of a different size seems wholly irrelevant."[3] Why the Cause Is Not Non-personal Without Coherence First, Con is suggesting a natural cause, for "many contemporary thinkers adopt a naturalist view of the mental realm because they think that otherwise we will be unable to explain how mental processes can causally influence non-mental processes."[4] The non-mental state of a naturalistic, timeless, immaterial being is incoherent because naturalism implies physicalism, and since physicalism implies material states, then the actual cause of such material states logically can't be material, and therefore can't be natural! Con wants us to believe in non-sense over coherence; a supernatural-natural cause over a supernatural-personal cause…Con merely complains in the same old tit-for-tat manner that if a personal cause can enjoy coherency, then a non-personal cause can too. This is just a miserable objection. I've already demonstrated the coherency and plausibility of a personal cause while showing a non-personal cause as incoherent. Con has yet to demonstrate the coherence of his case let alone its plausibility! Without Content Con is correct that the lack of content for his supernatural-natural cause doesn't justify the conclusion that the supernatural cause is personal. But first, I gave 4 arguments for thinking why the cause is in fact personal, not just a lack of content argument. Second, what the lack of content charge does show, is that Con's supernatural-natural cause is meaningless; it has no content. Without Potentialities Con repeats ignorance on why it's only universes that his natural cause somehow creates from a state lacking any potentialities. But my argument here isn't:1) since we're ignorant on why it's only universe's this natural cause has the potential for creating, so therefore a natural cause of the universe doesn't exist…rather my argument is: 2) if a natural cause is to be established as a more plausible candidate for the cause of the universe, then we must know how such a cause has the potential to change a timeless state to another state so that time comes into being without it choosing to do so with a will. For if Con can't offer a possible potentiality, then it's not to be preferred to a known potentiality; agent causation. Thus 2 isn't an argument from ignorance, but Con's is! For he argues that we don't know what potentialities a natural cause would have, so therefore it's more plausible than a personal cause. Citations 1. http://plato.stanford.edu...2. JL Mackie, "The Miracle of Theism"3. Plantinga, "Where the Conflict Really Lies"4. http://plato.stanford.edu...