Big Bang cosmology supports atheism over theism.

Ave.I want to repeat what my friend Philo said, just so that we have a fair debate. He is not agreeing with the first premise which state that an initial states does not exist. He only agrees that the other premises of the argument follows logically from the first premise. He's trying to make the debate about the truth of the premises rather than their logical validity.I have my view of the universe, and Philo has his. My view of the universe is supported by science, but weaker on the philosophy. Philo's view is not supported by the science, but is stronger on the philosophy. My contention is that, since we are debating cosmology, the argument that is best supported by the science should be weighted more than the argument that is not. I'm not trying to dismiss philosophy when I say this. I think philosophy is extremely useful and interesting, and we couldn't do much without it. I'm just saying that, in the context of a discussion about cosmology, the scientific evidence should be considered more important than the philosophical evidence. It is true that a sound argument is a sound argument, but science and philosophy seem to contradict each other in this case. This gives us a reason to ask 'Which should be considered more important, the sound scientific argument, or the sound philosophical argument?'. This is cosmology, a scientific subject. Therefore, we should lean towards the former rather than the latter.Of course, this is based on the premise that the science favors my position. In my opening statement, I gave scientific and mathematical reasons as to why a singularity could not exist. Philo didn't dispute these reasons in the round after my opening statement, but he criticized me in the last round. Philo says that the only science I have given to show that the singularity could not exist is the fact that the Hawking-Penrose theorem was withdrawn. I think it's silly to treat this as if it was a trivial piece of evidence. The HP theorem is the only reason to accept a singularity, so once that's taken out of the way, there is no reason for a singularity. He also accuses me of an appeal to authority because I quoted Stephen Hawking. He goes on to say that I haven't given any scientific reasons for thinking that there was no singularity. Firstly, I wasn't saying that there was no singularity just because Hawking said so. I was quoting him because he gave an argument against a singularity that is based on science. This argument was that quantum mechanics make a singularity unnecessary. I was more focused on what he was saying than who said it. It turns out that Philo has never actually answered the scientific and mathematical reasons as to why a singularity does not exist. He's just misused a logical fallacy. So, we have two facts that have not been disputed about the singularity. The first one is that it does not have to exist when quantum mechanics is taken into account. The second fact is that, if it ever did exist, it would break down because it can't even be actualized. Philo can answer these reasons in his last round, but since it's the last round, they shouldn't be considered when it's time to vote, as I don't have a round to answer back to his new arguments.I think this whole controversy about the fallacy of composition is just a misunderstanding. I'll try a different approach to work this out. Christian philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig once gave a presentation called 'Worst Objections to the Kalam', where he addressed internet refutations of the KCA. When speaking about the fallacy of composition, Dr. Craig said something that is relevant to this discussion. During this presentation, he gave the same exact example that I gave to show that sometimes, reasoning by composition is valid. Dr. Craig says, 'For example, a fence with pickets that are all green is also a green fence'. This is the same logic of my argument. If you define the fence as its pickets, and all of the pickets are green, then the fence is also green. On the same token, if you define the universe as all of its states, and you give a casual explanation for all of its states, then you've also explained the cause of the universe. Philo seems to agree that there are cases when reasoning by composition is valid when he says 'there are exceptions to it'. However, he thinks that my argument cannot be an exception. Why? He argues that even if every state of the universe is caused by a prior state, it does not explain how the universe caused itself. I think there is a little bit of equivocation though. I think Philo is thinking of the 'X was caused by X' sense of 'self-caused' that I dismissed in my opening statement. This is what leads him to conclude that self-causation is incoherent. Yes, self-causation defined in that way is incoherent, but that's not what my argument means by self-caused. [1]In my last round, I devoted space to talking about whether the division of time was real or just conceptual. I gave an argument as to why states of time like 1/4th and 1/32 were real things rather than just concepts. I read Philo's argument twice, and I didn't see any response to this. I will assume that he found my answer to be satisfactory.I actually don't understand Philo's argument from motion, so I'll drop the point. However, Philo also dropped my point about how the division of time is more than conceptual. So, this shouldn't harm either of us when the audience votes on the debate.There is also the issue of how we come to the present moment under my view of the universe. The words 'present moment' is important. It's a statement about the current state of time. Primarily, it means that we are in the latest state of time. If I'm alive at 5:30 on January 1st in the year of 1944, that's the present moment, because it's the latest state of time. 5:31 on January 1st in the year of 1944 hasn't been actualized. Philo asks how we can come to the present moment if my view of the universe is true. This dilemma only works for universes where time is infinite into the past. That's the problem with Philo's argument, because as I demonstrated, time is not infinite into the past on my view of the universe. The states are infinite, sure, but the time in each state is not. None of these states are greater than or equal to thirteen billion years ago. I think it's irrelevant to talk about the states being infinite, because as long as the time is not, the dilemma does not apply.I think I did much more than simply dismiss the GR paradox. I took great pains to demonstrate that the GR paradox can be reconciled with an infinite number of states between 0 and 1. Even if we have no epistemological answer to the GR paradox, there must be an ontological answer, because otherwise we would have a logical contradiction. That's the argument I gave, and that's miles away from just rejecting the argument. Philo says that we can represent the first state as an open interval with zero as a limit. I'm not sure how this would work, because such an interval would be 0 < X < 1. What exactly does X represent? There an infinite number of things that X could represent that would make it true. 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, for an infinity. So even if you represented the first state of the universe in such a way, it will still be an infinite number of T= states. [2] See that reference if you're confused over what an open interval with no end points is.I thank Philo for answering the question. I wasn't really trying to make an argument, but I wanted to keep things interesting for the audience, rather than have a tedious point-by-point discussion. I just might send that to Dr. Craig for his thoughts. I thank Philo for an amazing debate, and I hope we have a good post-debate discussion on Skype.Vale.References1: http://www.youtube.com...2: http://tinyurl.com...