Free-will is a more irrational belief than young Earth Creationism

Pro opens by attempting to summarize my argument as follows: "Here we have someone arguing that YEC is irrational because naturalism and determinism is true, but free-will is rational because naturalism and determinism are false, LOL! "LOL! Pro summarized it wrong! I made two arguments in favor of the existence of free will, neither of which involved the claim that determinism is entirely false. My first argument was that consciousness exists separately from physical matter (substance dualism) and is thus not governed by determinism; however, physical matter is still subject to determinism, which is all that is needed for my refutations of YEC to hold true. My second argument was from indeterminism, which maintains that determinism only breaks down at the quantum level; because quantum effects are negligible on larger scales, my refutations of YEC remain sound [1]. C1) Young Earth CreationismPro cites a source claiming that radioactive day rates can change with solar activity, but that same source admits that those fluctuations would be extremely small (0.1%), thus failing to have a significant effect on the age calculations derived from it; the researcher from the source is far more concerned with how these fluctuations could be used to predict solar flares than she is with the negligible implications they may have on the Earth's age. Pro then cites a source claiming that since soft tissu been found in dinosaur fossils, those fossils cannot be as old as radiometric dating would have us believe; however, this phenomon has already been explained: "Iron is an element present in abundance in the body, particularly in the blood, where it is part of the protein that carries oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. Iron is also highly reactive with other molecules, so the body keeps it locked up tight, bound to molecules that prevent it from wreaking havoc on the tissues. After death, though, iron is let free from its cage. It forms minuscule iron nanoparticles and also generates free radicals, which are highly reactive molecules thought to be involved in aging. 'The free radicals cause proteins and cell membranes to tie in knots,' Schweitzer said. 'They basically act like formaldehyde. ' Formaldehyde, of course, preserves tissue. It works by linking up, or cross-linking, the amino acids that make up proteins, which makes those proteins more resistant to decay. " [2]. Even if you doubt the accuracy of radiometric dating, Pro has yet to contest all the other lines of evidence refuting the possibility of a young Earth, such as ice layering, erosion, amino acid dating, and continental drift. Furthermore, Pro has yet to provide any evidence for the existence of God or the authority of the Bible. Young Earth Creationism remains conclusively refuted. C2) Free Willa. Substance DualismPro basically just rejects my argument from substance dualism because he doesn't like it. I showed that it is prima facie obvious that consciousness cannot be explained exclusively in materialistic terms, and Pro has completely failed to provide *any* compelling evidence to the contrary. When I observe that two things look blatantly dissimilar, it is not my job to show that they are different things; it is my opponent's job to show that they are the same. Chemicals which "alter consciousness" don't affect a person's *consciousness*, per se, but rather, they affect brain function, messing up certain parts of our brain which are necessary for coordinated motion and accurate sensory perception. There is a difference between the cognitive faculties of the brain, which allow us to function akin to highly advanced computers, and consciousness, which truly differentiates us from the rest of the mechanistic universe-- the inexplicable personifying faculty which makes us emotional human beings. Con claims that by arguing for the existence of consciousness as a separate "substance" from the rest of the physical universe, I will have somehow conceded some sort of flaw with science as a whole. However, that is patently false, as all it would mean is that there are certain elements of the universe which science cannot explain due to its materialist assumptions. It would simply limit how far neurology can go in explaining how the human mind. The science supporting my refutations of YEC is still perfectly sound. b. IndeterminismPro claims that since humans cannot control quantum particles in the brain, free will still does not exist. This premise is actually highly questionable; one of the most prominent oddities with quantum mechanics is that wave function collapse only seems to occur upon conscious observation or interaction. The implication of this is that human cognitive faculties *can* still interact with and exercise control over the electrical signals in their brain, thus allowing for what we would call free will. c. Scientific ExperimentsDue to Pro's lack of sourcing, I had to research these experiments for myself. The only one I was able to find a substantial amount of information on was Libet's experiment, so I'm going to just focus on that one. [. http://www.informationphilosopher.com...]The results of this experiment simply do not contradict the existence of free will. It obviously does not conflict with the substance dualism model because it only deals with when the physical brain becomes aware that a decision has been made. The faculty of consciousness can still play a role in making the initial decision, which by no means has been proven to be exclusively the result of physical brain function; Libet's experiment only studies how a decision manifests itself into an action-- it says nothing about the source of those decisions, which is what free will is concerned with. As for its supposed clash with the indeterministic model of free will: "Libet made a modest attempt to uphold the idea of free will, by introducing the concept of a 'veto right'" of the will: . .. Libet argued that there nevertheless must exist a certain point in time were conscious will can, indeed, deliberately choose not to follow the motoric input provided by the readiness potential," [3]. In other words, possibilities are generated by the brain's mechanistic function, and a person's "conscious will" chooses from them via process of elimination. This is actually quite compatible with the principles of quantum mechanics underlying indeterminism, being entirely based in "choosing" between possible pathways. C3) KritikBecause Pro is a jerk, I'm going to run a kritik:There is no objective 'spectrum of irrationality' that allows us to make claims like "X is more irrational than Y". It is nonsensical to try doing so because irrationality is not quantifiable or measurable. Just as we cannot objectively say X song is better than Y song, we cannot objectively say X idea is more irrational than Y idea. Just as there is no "standard unit of musical goodness" by which we can objectively rate how good a song is in relation to other songs, there is no "standard unity of irrationality by which we can objectively rate how rational or irrational an idea is in relation to other ideas. Examine the following logical fallacies:P1: Some men are doctors. P2: Some doctors are tall. C1: Therefore, some men are tall. P1: Some men are doctors. P2: Some doctors are women. C2: Therefore, some men are women. The first conclusion gives the impression of being more irrational than the second only because it conforms to what we already know to be true, while the other does not. However, both succumb to the same fallacy (non-sequitur) and are thus equally irrational. There is no reason to consider any one irrational idea to be "more irrational" than another because, ultimately, they all succumb to the same flaw of *not* being derived from sound logic. In other words, rationality is binary, so it is impossible to make the claim made in the resolution; one concept cannot be more irrational than the other. Since Pro is the one making the affirmative claim, and I, as Con, only have to debunk it, this observation alone wins me the debate. ============CONCLUSION============Young Earth Creationism has been shown to be conclusively refuted, meaning that Pro must do the same for Free Will. Far from accomplishing that, he has not successfully refuted either of the justifications for free will that I presented (dualism and indeterminism), leaving the resolution resoundingly negated. Furthermore, Pro's burden of proof in this debate is impossible to fulfill because it requires him to make objective comparisons of irrationality, which is inherently immeasurable and binary. I rest my case. [1] . http://philosophy.tamu.edu...[2] . http://www.livescience.com...[3] . http://www.academia.edu...