Instigator / Pro
12
1488
rating
1
debates
0.0%
won
Topic
#2801

This house believes: Motion in the universe points to the existence of God.

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
6
Better sources
6
6
Better legibility
3
3
Better conduct
0
3

After 3 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

Sum1hugme
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two weeks
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
18
1627
rating
37
debates
66.22%
won
Description

By "exist" I mean to have objective being in reality.

By God I mean an omnipotent, eternal being.

By motion, I mean the actualization of a potential, in other words, change.

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@Benjamin

First of all, way to drop the main point, second off no that example isn't analogous, why not? I do not claim that the universe as we know it is infinite, I claimed that is is possible that the universe prior to time is infinite... except, you should notice something, how can something without time be infinite, as in exist infinitely? It couldn't because there would be no time for it to exist in - you see- before the big bang our understanding of physics breaks down, you cannot apply logic to that pre-big bang or whatever you want to claim caused spacetime to exist, as you can now - it is simply not valid.

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@Barney

Thank you for voting.

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@Benjamin

A god of the gaps argument is any argument that attempts to answer a question we don't know the answer to, like, "what caused the big bang," or "what causes lightning." We used to say it was zeus that caused lightning. If your claim is that god caused either, then that is a god of the gaps since there is no evidence to suggest that corresponds to reality. The fact that we know what causes rain replaces the former gods of rain that we would pray and sacrifice to in order to bring the rain. You're just substantiating the point that it's a god of the gaps fallacy.

God was defined as a being. You can't prove that the universe was put into motion by a being. And my opponent failed to prove that.

Your categories are just incoherent. You can't prove god exists, or that the supernatural is even possible, therefore you can't use god as a category of things that exist. It's a non-starter if you can't indicate it even exists.

You contest that unicorns are post hoc but cede that FSM is also equally post hoc as saying it was god that started the expansion. I should've specified, magical unicorns, who necessarily exist to create the universe. It's the exact same argument. It's just a unicorn of the gaps.

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@Theweakeredge

Imagine you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. All of the rooms are occupied.

From every room with an odd number, the inhabitant leaves. Now, you have an actual infinity minus an actual infinity. The result? infinity-infinity=infinity.

Another scenario is that all rooms with a higher number than 3 are left by their inhabitants. In this case, infinity-infinity=3

In other words, such a hotel can never exist, because the same equation (infinity-infinity) gives us different results (infinity or 3 or any number)

This clearly is logically absurd. An infinite hotel with an infinite number of rooms could never exist.

Now, swap the hotel with spacetime instances, and the same problem emerges: if infinite, a universe becomes logically absurd.

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@Benjamin

We already have a definition for both words: God and a universe - a god is always a being - a universe is evidently not - therefore even if we were to subject that definition to the universe it would necessarily require you to assert that the universe is sentient, is an agent - that is evidently not the case - therefore you are either ad hoc claiming it is, or you are using an insufficient definition. Furthermore, if you do not make the argument yourself, I don't find it worth my time to check it

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@Theweakeredge

I assure you that my definition is correct.

If the universe is the word for God, then matter warps God, and God is expanding, and God is composed of other things.

Honestly, asserting that the universe has innate existence contradicts all logic, as an eternal universe is ABSURD.
Watch this video to learn why a universe cannot be infinite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vybNvc6mxMo

My definition of God is sound. You claim it to be nonsense, please elaborate.

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@Benjamin

The problem with that argument is that you are defining god into existence, if I were to define a unicorn as a "Mammal on four legs with a horn", then of course I could prove the existence of a Unicorn, we have all sorts of animals with those properties. The same goes for god, you are asserting a definition arbitrarily that way, "Of course he exists" the problem is we already have a word for it - the universe, your definition is nonsense.

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@Theweakeredge

Just the part of the vote that is written directly is enough to make the vote valid, on par with your vote.

Please elaborate on what went wrong in my vote, I thought the entire point of voting was using your own reasoning to analyse the debate.

Regardless, my vote still fits the criteria, and I analyse it thoroughly. I

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@Sum1hugme

Wrong. God of the gaps is using God to satisfy our seeking for knowledge when in reality God did not fill those holes. For example, I could claim "God sends the rain", but we know the sun drives the rain, not God. It is a God of the gaps theory, it contradicts rather than being supported by, loci. With creation it is different. God can be defined as "the thing that exists by necessity rather than contingency". Therefore, God existed eternally by definition. And anything that starts to exist has a cause. Therefore, the only logical conclusion I will now present.

Any existing thing falls into the following categories:
1. God
2. Things caused by God
3. Things caused by things from category 2 or category 3

Therefore, if something starts to exist, it must by definition exist BECAUSE of God.

Now, one can complain about the religious view of God, but his logically necessary nature makes "IT" an unavoidable conclusion.

The fallacy of comparing God to unicorns is that they, by definition, fit into categories 2 or 3, not category 1. If they truly fit into category 1, they would not have the properties of what we popularly attribute to a unicorn, it would just be to exchange the WORD God with unicorn.

In other words, a better wording of you complaint is this:

"Calling the immaterial creator God is equally uninformative as calling him Zeus, Allah, or even ofajieojfaoifmdwcqoiqoiwqeoicewuq"

God's nature is up for dispute. His existence is not.

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@Benjamin

It is evident that your vote is employing your own reasoning, not the reasoning of the debater, which is reportable - why not just have a debate - you and Sum1hugme?

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@Benjamin

Claiming it's an immaterial creator is equally post hoc as claiming it was unicorns or the flying spaghetti monster.

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@Benjamin

Spacetime came into existence at the moment of initial expansion.

In this debate, it was more my claim that my opponent had not touched his bop with any empirical data to suggest his proposition is correspondent to reality. He accepted the framework of cosmic origins being big bang inflation by not contesting that framework, and therefore he has to prove a creator initiated the first movement. He couldn't do that, and I drilled that point over and over.

Personally, I reject the idea because it's a post hoc rationalization that makes no testable predictions and is the definition of a god of the gaps.

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@Sum1hugme

If time didn't exist before BB, then why do you reject the existence of an immaterial creator? Nothing else could create the universe.

If the universe is not created, it must have existed before the BB. In other words, spacetime is either infinite or it has an external cause.

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@Benjamin

The geodesics coming out the back are part of the hypothetical model of cyclic cosmology.

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@Benjamin

It's not baseless. We are talking about temporal causality in a unidirectional time geodesic. Time is relative to the observer, which we know from general relatuvity. Following back the geodesics that represent relative timelines, then they will converge to a point where they do not go past; where Time=0. At which point, causality as we understand it, breaks down. Time didn't exist before time existed. Your objections are mute.

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@Sum1hugme

The video you sent me, that I also watched yesterday, says that the geodesics come out on another side, in an earlier universe. This continues the impossibly long chain of causes that my video debunks as logically possible.

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@Sum1hugme

The inflation model goes like this:

1. Energy exists very densely

2. Spacetime starts to expand rapidly, then slowly

3. Current physical laws starts explaining the universe

I see no reason to baselessly assert that causality didn't exist before BB simply because our perception of time falls short of describing it.

Tell me, if we define "time" as the rate at which change occurs, did time exist before BB?

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@Benjamin

No, in the Big Bang Theory, the Big Bang is the initial expansion. There is no claim as to what the cause was, but it is evidently incoherent to ask "what came before the Big Bang." There is no evidence to suggest that this or that "caused" cosmic inflation. Inflation is when time began. Energy isn't a "cause". It would've been just compressed where all energy is in the same point.

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@Sum1hugme

How can something whose existence is independent, have a beginning? In BB, you claim spacetime started to exist so that expansion and causality could happen. Doesn't that mean that the existence of spacetime is dependent on a real event, BB, and a real cause, energy?

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@Benjamin

I replied the dependency argument by pointing out that there is no precedent for a dependent universe like there is for dependent ceiling fans.

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@Benjamin

Logic doesn't govern the Universe. We use logic to describe aspects of it. You can't apply temporal causality where time doesn't exist.

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@Sum1hugme

I have already watched that video. It doesn't account for the problem of infinity. Even a cyclic universe breaks basic logical laws by proposing infinite change.

If the fan doesn’t need any external support but can support other things, then that fan is indistinguishable from the roof. However, if the universe can change and be altered by its environment then it cannot have this property of being eternal, as PRO proved. Thus, any objection against the "illogic" of God/first cause would apply even more so to a universe that doesn’t need God.

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@Benjamin

This is a better video : https://youtu.be/K8gV05nS7mc

And no, I didn't say the energy compressed into the "singularity" caused the universe. I didn't call anything god, you're just applying that term post hoc

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@Theweakeredge

The law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created only changes from one form to another. Any closed system would be eternal.

If something like a multiverse is where the energy before BB comes from, then that only widens our closed system.

To truly create energy out of nothing, aka initiating a closed system, one would need a cause that could release energy while still not changing.

Theists believe that thing to be God, but one cannot simply discard the idea as absurd because of the association with religion.

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@Theweakeredge

Where do you get your assumption from? Nothing cannot create something. Only something can create something.

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@Benjamin

You assume that the only way something can happen is by causality.... the problem there is that before causality, something necessarily would have to be for something esle to happen, in this case, that something else could be nothing. Nothing could cause something. This is unintuitive yes; however, that is where our case leads us logically.

IF there was no causality, THEN the big bang could have popped into existence, randomly began, a number of things - see that's where "we don't know" comes in handy. Asserting that it is a god, is literally a textbook god of the gaps fallacy.

Any future voters, I implore you to ignore this comment section in its entirety, only use the debate itself to inform your views.

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@Sum1hugme

But,,, isn't that realm the same as "god", in that it is

1) timeless,
2) unchanging,
3) causes the universe

You are merely asserting God is the energy before BB.

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@Benjamin

You can't apply temporal causality to a realm where time doesn't exist and doesn't apply. So eternal universe models are compatible with the big bang inflationary model. My opponent implicitly agreed to the framework by not contesting that we can extrapolate back the first movement, cosmic inflation. In the framework of inflationary cosmology, the above statements are true.

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@Sum1hugme
@Soluminsanis

Reading your debate led me to watch this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vybNvc6mxMo

It claims that an infinite number of events cannot possibly have happened.

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@Sum1hugme

Ok, you assume time doesn't exist, neither does causality, before BB.

In other words, nothing *happened* before BB?

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@Benjamin

"I find it strange and meaningless to assume that energy is eternal, but then also reject causality and time before the BB. Is energy older than spacetime itself?"

Classical time is not applicable when particles become massless. When the universe is condensed into a point of infinite curvature, then all the matter would be just energy. So classical time doesn't apply. So I was not contradicting myself.

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@Benjamin

"CON’s last statement on this matter was that “An important objection to raise is that there is precedent that ceiling fans need support to hang on the ceiling” This argument is counterintuitive, but also not evidently true or logical. If the universe is not reliant on god for its existence, and “all that exists” exists BECAUSE of the universe, isn’t CON making the argument that the universe is the same as God? Indeed that is the case."

No I was not arguing that the universe is god lol.

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@Sum1hugme
@Soluminsanis

Thank you for a brilliant debate.

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@Benjamin

Thank you for voting

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@Theweakeredge

Thank you for voting.

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@Sum1hugme

your bump has been answered

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@Sum1hugme
@Soluminsanis

Very interesting debate indeed. I think of voting in the near future.

Vote bump

Vote bump

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@Soluminsanis

Hope you didn't quit the site.

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@Soluminsanis

Yeah np

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@Sum1hugme

Huge thank you for the debate, looking forward to your rejoinders!