The Statement 'God Exists' is Rationally Justifiable.

PrefaceNote I didn’t directly respond to round 3, as I wasn’t sure if they were just additional arguments. For this round I will address both mostly Pro’s Round 3. Semantics *Sigh* So Pro is mixing and matching words to suit his needs. Pro never provided the definitions he was working with in his opening round, thus I accepted this debate assuming the most common terms used in Philosophy. I am seriously left scratching my head at what his arguments are actually saying now. Pro uses the words ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’ very differently to the common notion of these words. They have very precise definitions, and given this argument is ontological, then it follows that these definitions are used. Looking up these terms on Wikipedia for example yields no notion of ‘caused/uncaused’. [1] Thus voters should penalise Pro for not being clear in the definition of God from the outset. Furthermore Pro mixes and matches the use of necessary to mean both ‘uncaused’ and ‘impossible otherwise’ in his arguments, thus it’s clear it’s Pro who falls foul of using poor semantics. Now Pro says he didn’t mean inductive the way I proposed it. When pro argues “inductively true” it’s clear Pro is referring to epistemology, which induction is one form. Thus his alternative meaning of the work is again moving the goalpost. I made arguments how the law of causality cannot be inductively true. Reducio Ad Absurdum Pro objects to my reducio on definitional grounds, however Pro defined ‘event’ in Round 2 as: “caused entity, or existent entity.” Thus, God by definition falls into this category; hence the reducio ad absurdum remains logically valid. Pro’s entire position is thus self-refuting. If Pro wants to argue God is not an event then he needs to argue that God is neither a caused entity, nor an existent entity, thus ruling God non-existent and conceding this debate. Pro cannot just chop and change definitions when he doesn’t want them to apply to God. That’s just asinine and absurd. I literally see no way for Pro to refute this reducio without conceding Premise 2, which also refutes his position. Thus the reducio shows that both the law of causality and a “first cause” cannot both be true. Pro cannot escape this by just defining it so, if only life was that easy. The presence of a non-gravitationally bound object would falsify the statement that “all objects are gravitationally bound”, thus the existence of a first cause would falsify a law of causality. Essential Existence Pro gives two definitions in his opening: Existence = Attribute subsequent to which an entity exists, & without which it doesn’t. Essence = Attribute through which an entity is itself, & without which it isn’t. I am going to challenge that these definitions are coherent. Pro argues last round that existence is a property and defines it so, but gives no reason to believe we can do this. I don’t concede this at all like Pro argues, he quote-mines me as I never conceded the notion. Moreover Pro makes no argument that essentialism is valid, it’s far from semantics as it’s literally the legs that hold up Pro’s entire case(!) since he treats existence like an attribute which can just be tagged into an entity’s essence (essential existence). Thus he must affirm that it is true otherwise he is literally just defining something with existence and calling it ‘God’. I made arguments such as the Australia argument, and denial of the predicate to show that treating existence as a property is incoherent, and Pro has made no defence of this, thus concedes this critical point. When we make the description of something, for example a ‘red apple’, we agree that the description describes the object IF it exists. The word ‘red’ isn’t isomorphic with the effect of red, and the word apple isn’t isomorphic with the geometry of an apple. Thus, a prima facie case can be made that an object’s description is only a conditional statement about the concept IF it existed. Thus it is incoherent to posit ‘existence’ with the properties, and it would also entail that ‘non-existence’ would also be a property, yet we end up with a description that is not a description – a clear contradiction. Pro defined first cause as “uncaused cause”, this is not the same as an “essential existence”. Pro makes no argument that this essential existence has any causal power, for example if we assume Platonic realism, then abstract objects such as numbers etc. also exist necessarily, yet they lack any causal agency.[2] Thus to posit some random essential existence as an exception is just a case of special pleading. Necessary vs. Contingent Existance Even assuming Pro’s notion of existence as a property is coherent, his arguments still fail, since if the universe was uncaused (necessary, according to Pro’s loose definition), it doesn’t follow the universe is the first-cause because this would just be a fallacy of composition. All the components within the universe would be caused, but none of them would be caused by the universe itself. This is possible in self-contained causal networks for example. A simple case for be “A causes B which Causes C which causes A”. Thus each of the components of the conjunct “ABC” are caused, yet the conjuct “ABC” is itself uncaused, and the conjunct itself has no causal effect itself. Uniformity of Nature Pro drops my argument that all inductive claims (such as the law of causality) needs to presuppose the uniformity of nature to hold, which I argued is obviously not the case when talking about the physical universe (my definition) as a whole. Pro affirms exactly my point when he argues that causality holds in various physical environments, which may be true however… they’re physical! They are within all our universal construct with the laws of physics, time and time directionality. I have no idea how Pro can make such a monumentally massive assumption that the law of causality holds outside of any physical construct. Pro didn’t touch my reasons for this either, it is time that give us our frame of reference of what caused what, without time there would be no ‘before’ or ‘after’, this is also the case without the arrow of time. Thus how can Pro possible make the sound be that the case that the inductive principles we use within our universe, where A causes B, actually holds when time is removed from the equation> Inductively, we know causes precede effects, thus Con is going to shoot himself in the foot when he asserts it still applies outside of that context. Moreover, it is because of the laws of physics that the Earth doesn’t randomly move around space, or plunge into the Sun. The universe provides the construct by which these laws are realised. Thus naturally without these constraints that the universe imposes, why should we expect things to still act according to laws (the law of causality). The uniformity of nature simply doesn’t hold, and thus Pro’s monumental claims of causality holding are patently absurd. Furthermore even Pro’s case posits at least one thing that is uncaused, thus to posit things are uncaused (although not metaphysically necessary) is not prima facie absurd at all. Pro must assume it is absurd however for his arguments to remain valid. Causality & Physics Pro misunderstands the point I was trying to make by arguing that indeterminism is logically consistent. I am arguing that there is no reason for us to accept the law of causality as something that holds at a fundamental level, one reason often posited is the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). However, in indeterminism the PSR doesn’t hold, as there is no reason for differential states (two uranium-238 atoms giving two different products in identical starting conditions). Thus, we know that not all phenomena necessarily need a causal explanation, such as the differential quantum tunnelling effects. The law as we know it is an empirical law (inductive), and not a logical law (a priori/deductive), and like any other scientific law, we have no reason to believe it would hold outside of the universe’s existence. Moreover Pro demanded a cause in where the difference between two essential existances comes from. I ask, why do two essential existences need a cause if it’s coherent for them to have one without one? He is demanding an explanation where he has no right to demand one. Eternalism Pro seems to confuse what I mean by eternalism, which is just an ontology of time, from which there are numerous sub-ontologies, such as the moving spotlight theory, etc. Thus Pro’s objections to it being incomplete and against QM are off-target (QM works just fine in such a construct anyway, cf. Quantum Eternity Theorum). Pro has given no reason to think eternalism is false, and it necessarily must be false otherwise Pro’s arguments are invalid because there is no genuine ‘change’ of the universe in eternalism (e.g. from non-being to being), which renders half of Pro’s arguments invalid, as they all do presuppose there is genuine change (argument 2, Inductive Defence, argument against actual infinites, etc.). He argues that the universe must have a beginning thus eternalism is false but this completely misunderstands what eternalism is. Eternalism is completely compatible with a finite (in time) universe, the universe’s beginning would be no more impressive than a ruler has an edge. Further, I gave reasons to believe eternalism is likely true from special relativity, however I do not need to prove this to show Pro’s arguments are unsound, Pro doesn’t have this same luxury though, as he is the one making the necessary presuppositions. Conclusion So far I have demonstrated that God is incoherent by both reducio ad absurdum, and attacking the notion of essential existence. Pro's arguments have been extremely vague, with numerous dubious presuppositions such as with what existance is, and if it can be predicated. References 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org...