It is likely that a God or gods exist

The Omnipotence "Paradox" and Reverse Ontological Argument My opponent says God is the greatest being that can be conceived. He claims that God has omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience. Note that I never claimed to be defending such a narrow, strict, Judeo-Christian concept of God. In round 1, I stated the following: "Rather, I use a more general, commonplace definition in which gods are either supernatural creators of the universe or even simply supernatural entities that are responsible for a specific aspect of the universe (for example, Poseidon is the god of the ocean, or Mars is the god of war). That is not to say that God cannot possess attributes such as being omnipotent or omniscient or omnibenevolent. Rather, Pro does not necessarily need to establish both that the creator of the universe exists and that he possesses characteristics ascribed to him by Judeo-Christian theologians and philosophers. " Indeed, none of my arguments imply that God or gods are omnipotent and omniscient. A God or gods might be very powerful, but I never claimed that they were all-powerful or all-knowing. Hence, both Con"s argument against omnipotence and his reverse modal ontological argument are simply irrelevant to this debate. The Argument from Atemporal Minds In regard to this argument, I dispute the second premise. If you make a house, are you not allowed to live in the house you made? Many theologians, such as William Lane Craig, believe that God exists omnitemporally, entering into time when he creates the universe [5]. Moreover, my opponent has not proven the fifth premise. Even a timeless mind can hold beliefs and knowledge eternally, without ever interacting in time. So it would seem that the Argument from Atemporal Minds is quite inadequate at disproving the existence of a God or gods. Kalam Cosmologoical Argument My opponent questions both premises of the argument, but his objections are weak. He claims that I provide no non-inductive justification for the first premise. I protest! I did provide good non-inductive reasons for believing in the first premise. For example, how can something come from nothing when nothing does not have any properties? My opponent gives no response to this argument. Moreover, my opponent claims that somehow using inductive evidence like the fact that our everyday experience confirms the first premise is somehow a flaw in the argument. Science relies on induction all the time, so why should we suddenly question the value of inductive reasoning when it comes to the causal premise? My opponent is committing what has been called the Taxicab Fallacy, in which he takes and applies the causal premise to almost everything, yet gets out of the taxi when it takes him somewhere that he does not want to go, namely to the question of whether the universe must have a cause of its existence. My opponent also questions the second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, namely that the universe began to exist. However, he does not provide an alternate, compelling theory to compete with the standard Big Bang model of the universe to show that the universe has an infinite past. He claims that entropy did not increase until after the Big Bang, but this assertion is completely unsupported with no sources (In fact, his opening statement contains no sources! ). In contrast, in the previous round, I provided a source that explicitly stated that the entropy in the universe "will always increase over time" and "can never be negative" [1]. Contrary to my opponent"s claims, the second law of thermodynamics does appear to provide evidence that the universe had a beginning. Moreover, my opponent fails to show that the concept of an actually infinite number of past events is metaphysically possible. Why is it that if one tries to subtract infinity from infinity, one gets contradictory answers? Such results are metaphysically absurd. For a more in-depth illustration on how this is crazy, see the Hilbert Hotel thought experiment [6]. My opponent also claims that the Kalam Cosmological Argument as a whole is an inductive argument and therefore somehow weak. But this is a poor objection. Both the Cosmological Argument and Fine-Tuning Argument are deductive arguments in which their conclusions follow deductively from their premises. Only the Argument from Religious Experiences is not formulated deductively, but that is an argument for the best explanation. It would seem like any complaints about these arguments on the basis on their form simply fail. Therefore, it would appear that my opponent has failed to provide any strong objections against the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Fine-Tuning Argument Amazingly, my opponent denies the existence of the fine-tuning of the constants of the universe, a truth which most physicists accept. An appeal to authority is not fallacious when the claim is not particularly controversial among the majority of experts. I recommend that my opponent listens to the podcast I cited in the previous round with astrophysicist Luke Barnes if he wishes to know more about how the constants are fine-tuned [2]. Here is one example. Robin Collins claims that "if the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form" [7]. Collins also cites numerous physicists in his article to demonstrate the scientific consensus on fine-tuning [7]. So I believe we have good reason to believe that the universe was fine-tuned. Argument from Religious Experiences My opponent provides almost no case against the Argument from Religious Experiences. He claims that it does not show that God exists necessarily, but I am not arguing for a conception of God as a maximally great being! Moreover, he points out that some people do not feel an inner divine presence. But this objection is as weak as saying that since some people are color-blind, colors do not exist! The fact is, very very many people throughout the world and throughout history have had religious experiences. There is a very simple explanation of them, namely that the divine exists. Meanwhile, divine experiences seem very implausible on atheism, and they require an explanation from the atheist. Without a good explanation on behalf of atheism, theism is clearly the best explanation for religious experiences. Arguments extend. Conclusion I have shown that my opponent"s arguments are either irrelevant to the debate at hand or simply false. Meanwhile, I have shown that my opponent"s objections to my arguments fail. Unless my opponent can provide a stronger case for atheism, we have good grounds for believing in a God or gods. [5] See William Lane Craig"s Debate with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong in the book God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist [1] . http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu... [6] . http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com.... I will not rehash the long argument here, since this source explains the thought experiment in a much better way than I could with the limited space I have in this debate. [7] . http://www.discovery.org...