Instigator / Pro
Conservallectual's avatar
0
Conservallectual
1417
rating
27
debates
24.07%
won
Topic
#3455

God exists

Status
Finished

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

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

After not so many votes...

It's a tie!
Tags
Religion
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
One day
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
Phenenas's avatar
0
Phenenas
1522
rating
18
debates
58.33%
won
Description

Definition of God: A maximally great being. A maximally great being is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being that created the universe. If a being was greater than God then that being would be God.

do not commit these fallacies:https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
respond as quickly and effectively as possible
Do not offend anyone
I will be held up by the previously mentioned rules

Round 1
Conservallectual's avatar
Conservallectual
Pro
#1
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence. If things can appear out of nowhere for no reason, then why don't we see this happen all the time and in all places? Why don't mountains of $100 bills just pop into existence? Why don't Lamborghinis appear in every human being's garage. why don't magic fairies pop out of nowhere to fly me to another world? The reason is that these things can't happen because things don't pop out of nowhere for no reason. Believing that things can pop out of nowhere is more of a stretch than believing in magic because with magic there is a wizard/magician casting the spell/trick. 

2. The universe began to exist. The evidence for this is clear:

  • The evidence for big bang of which almost every scientist accepts. This evidence includes red shift, galaxies going away from each other etc. If the universe had always existed everything would be infinitely far away from each other.
  • The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that everything is slowly running out of energy. This kills off the oscillating universe theory - which states that the universe is eternally expanding and contracting.

3. The universe has a cause for its existence:
If the first 2 premises are true then this is inevitable. But let's consider other possibilities - like a pre-existent substance that created the universe. So what would this substance be like? Well it would be:

  • Immensely powerful - for it created the universe
  • Timeless - for it created time
  • Immaterial - for it created all matter
  • Spaceless - for it created space
  • personal - for only information can create information
Doesn't this substance sound a lot like God?

Objections

Some other user from this site called "Bones" has tried to refute my first premise by presenting the concept of retrocausality:
the link defines retrocausality as:
"Retrocausality, or backwards causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one.[1][2] In quantum physics, the distinction between cause and effect is not made at the most fundamental level and so time-symmetric systems can be viewed as causal or retrocausal.[3][page needed] Philosophical considerations of time travel often address the same issues as retrocausality, as do treatments of the subject in fiction, but the two phenomena are distinct.[1]"
However retrocausality does not refute my argument because retrocausality requires time to exist. However before the universe there was no time, so no retrocausality.

Laurence Krauss has also tried to explain that a universe comes from nothing if there are pre existent quantum fluctuations. However these quantum fluctuations can only happen where there is time and space. And before the universe there was no time and space. Second of all  pre existent timeless and spaceless quantum fluctuations are not a true nothing(a true nothing doesn't even have  and are very similar to the necessary substance.

A multiverse doesn't disprove this either. Here are the problems with it:

  • The multiverse is pure speculation and there is no evidence for it and no ideas for to find evidence for it.
  • A multiverse can't have an infinite amount of universes because an infinite quantities don't exist in our physical world and cause mathematical absurdity(see Hilbert hotel).
  • Because infinite quantities can't exist then there can't be an infinite amount of past events. This rules out a multiverse that has existed in the eternity past.
  • Since the multiverse had to begin to exist, then it would have a cause. This cause has the same properties of the pre universe substance.

Phenenas's avatar
Phenenas
Con
#2
Thank you for your opening argument, Pro. I will give my rebuttal to these points, followed by a counter-argument of my own.

1. Rebuttal

First, the point that everything that begins to exist has a cause. My opponent has tried to preemptively refute the objection of quantum physics, but in doing so, he has missed the point of the objection. He says

“However these quantum fluctuations can only happen where there is time and space. And before the universe there was no time and space.”
But the point is that subatomic quantum particles, such as virtual particles, appear and disappear from observation, seemingly at random. The existence of time and space is not a sufficient explanation of a cause for particles appearing out of nowhere. It’s possible that the apparently random nature of quantum particles does have a cause which science does not understand yet. But at this point in time, any statements about the cause behind quantum mechanics would be speculation, so we cannot make the sweeping statement that everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Next, the point that the universe began to exist. Again, very little is scientifically known about the early stages of the Big Bang or about what, if anything, existed before it. Red shift and galaxies growing further apart is evidence that the Big Bang occurred, but it doesn’t prove that nothing existed before the Big Bang. There are many competing theories about the pre-Big Bang universe, and with how little we know, they are not so easily batted away. When we attempt to study the singularity, or all of the matter in the universe concentrated into a single point just prior to the Big Bang, our predictive theories break down. My opponent points to the 2nd law of thermodynamics to “kill off” the oscillating universe theory, but the laws of thermodynamics, along with all of our laws of physics, only apply to the universe as it exists after the Big Bang. It’s entirely possible that whatever existed prior to the Big Bang operates by laws completely incongruous with our physics. And if the cyclical universe theory was somehow in direct violation of the laws of physics, then why do so many well-respected physicists such as Paul Steinhardt, Neil Turok, and Roger Penrose endorse it? The universe could be eternally expanding and contracting, stretching back into infinity, in accordance with some extra-universal law which is completely beyond our comprehension. Even time itself was created in the Big Bang, after all, so who’s to say that there needs to be a definitive beginning? I’m not saying these things are definitely the case - the point is, we simply don’t know. So it would be very presumptuous to say that the universe began to exist.

It’s also worth mentioning that while Pro cites the laws of thermodynamics to bat away models of the pre-Big Bang universe such as the oscillating universe theory, he then goes on to lay out a definition of God which is completely incongruous with the laws of physics. To play off my opponent’s example, is God slowly running out of energy, since he stated that the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to everything? My opponent could retort that God is immaterial and spaceless, and is therefore not subject to the laws of physics, but then how could he wield the laws of physics so confidently to attack models of a pre-Big Bang universe? Our laws of physics only describe the universe from right after the point of the Big Bang - any earlier than that, they have nothing to say. Not to mention, who is to say that something needs to be timeless to create time, spaceless to create space, etc? You need to lay a lot more logical groundwork to prove something like that, especially with the sudden inversion in logic at the end: “Only information can create information”. I could just as easily say:

“The thing that created the universe must be:

  • Human - for only human beings can create and process information
  • Large - for it must be greater than the sum of all matter
  • From a cold place - for it created heat
  • Generous - for creating the universe requires a tremendous expense of energy
  • Jolly - for it created happiness
Therefore, Santa Claus created the universe.”

Call it absurd, but this argument has no less logical backing than what my opponent is asserting. We cannot simply will things into existence through wordplay.

And even if we put aside these criticisms of Pro’s argument and take it at face value, the God he has supposedly proven has nothing to do with the God that was established in the definition. He claims that this argument proves the existence of an immensely powerful, timeless, immaterial, spaceless, personal being. However, this doesn’t even touch on the question of whether this being is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, as the definition laid out. In order to satisfy the burden of proof, Pro would have to demonstrate that this being he is speaking of is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. By definition, a being that lacks any of these three qualities is not God.

The only one of these qualities that Pro has touched on is omnipotence, yet “immensely powerful” does not mean “infinitely powerful”. Pro also has yet to prove that this being is all-knowing and possesses infinite goodness. It is difficult to see how this last quality, in particular, follows in any way from the axioms that have been established. This segues into my own affirmative argument against the existence of God.

2. Constructive Argument

God, as defined in the description as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being, cannot possibly exist. The reason for this is the existence of evil and suffering. My argument takes this model, borrowing from Adam Lee:

Assumption (1): God exists.
        Assumption (1a): God is all-knowing.
        Assumption (1b): God is all-powerful.
        Assumption (1c): God is perfectly loving.
        Assumption (1d): Any being that did not possess all three of the above properties would not be God.
Premise (2): Evil exists.
Premise (3): An all-knowing being would be aware of the existence of evil.
Premise (4): An all-powerful being would be able to eliminate evil.
Premise (5): A perfectly loving being would desire to eliminate evil.
Conclusion (6): Evil does not exist. (from (1),(3),(4),(5))
Contradiction: But evil does exist. (from (2))
Conclusion (7): There is no being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving. (from (2),(3),(4),(5))
Conclusion (8): God does not exist. (from (7),(1d))
We live in a world where children regularly die of cancer, innocent people are struck by illness and starvation and war, and earthquakes and tsunamis obliterate homes, families, communities, and churches indiscriminately. This only scratches the surface of the suffering and evil that humans endure all over the world, on a daily basis. I contend that this suffering would be impossible if an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being existed, and therefore, no such being exists. The key qualifier is “omnibenevolent”. Wiktionary defines this as “All-loving, or infinitely good”. If God were truly infinitely loving, or infinitely good and forgiving and merciful, then God would surely want to prevent atrocities such as the ones listed above from happening. We would expect even a mildly, slightly good person not to allow a child to die. Yet God allows scores of children to die every day and somehow lands the title of “infinitely good”. If God were not omnipotent, he could be forgiven, yet according to Pro’s definition and the doctrines of most religions, he’s totally capable of swooping in and saving all the children he wants, he simply chooses not to. Likewise, if God were not omniscient and was simply unaware of these atrocities, he could be forgiven. But that door is closed as well.

This is obviously a very old debate, and with good reason: it is a clear philosophical paradox built into the doctrines of several major world religions. And I have never seen the objections listed above satisfactorily answered without some sort of evasion or obfuscation of the issue. The way suffering is distributed suggests that it is a random and arbitrary force, caused by impersonal natural processes or malevolent people, not a benevolent creator with any sense of justice. Natural disasters do not discriminate between good and bad people, or between the believer and the nonbeliever. Take Haiti as an example. With a 96% Christian population, it is among the most Christian countries in the world. Just last year, there was an earthquake that killed thousands of people, injured many innocent families and children, and damaged or destroyed hundreds of churches. Why would an omnibenevolent, all-loving, infinitely merciful God single out this country full of innocent people for decimation, especially after they had endured an even more devastating earthquake just 11 years prior? And if we single out the Christian God in particular for discussion, why would he allow such things to happen to such a devoutly Christian nation, and allow hundreds of his houses of worship to be obliterated? Where is the moral order in this? God surely could have prevented this, just as easily as breathing - that is the definition of omnipotence. Just as he could easily kill evil people, prevent them from harming others, or at least allot suffering in a way that reflects some sense of justice. But the universe does not work that way, and for that reason, I conclude that God is an impossibility. 

There are many counter-arguments that have been advanced against the problem of evil over the centuries. Rather than go on through all of them, I will answer any objections made by Pro if and when they come up. Thank you for reading, and I now give the floor back to Pro.
Round 2
Conservallectual's avatar
Conservallectual
Pro
#3
Thank you for your opening argument, Pro. I will give my rebuttal to these points, followed by a counter-argument of my own.

1. Rebuttal

First, the point that everything that begins to exist has a cause. My opponent has tried to preemptively refute the objection of quantum physics, but in doing so, he has missed the point of the objection. He says

“However these quantum fluctuations can only happen where there is time and space. And before the universe there was no time and space.”
But the point is that subatomic quantum particles, such as virtual particles, appear and disappear from observation, seemingly at random. The existence of time and space is not a sufficient explanation of a cause for particles appearing out of nowhere. It’s possible that the apparently random nature of quantum particles does have a cause which science does not understand yet. But at this point in time, any statements about the cause behind quantum mechanics would be speculation, so we cannot make the sweeping statement that everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Next, the point that the universe began to exist. Again, very little is scientifically known about the early stages of the Big Bang or about what, if anything, existed before it. Red shift and galaxies growing further apart is evidence that the Big Bang occurred, but it doesn’t prove that nothing existed before the Big Bang. There are many competing theories about the pre-Big Bang universe, and with how little we know, they are not so easily batted away. When we attempt to study the singularity, or all of the matter in the universe concentrated into a single point just prior to the Big Bang, our predictive theories break down. My opponent points to the 2nd law of thermodynamics to “kill off” the oscillating universe theory, but the laws of thermodynamics, along with all of our laws of physics, only apply to the universe as it exists after the Big Bang. It’s entirely possible that whatever existed prior to the Big Bang operates by laws completely incongruous with our physics. And if the cyclical universe theory was somehow in direct violation of the laws of physics, then why do so many well-respected physicists such as Paul Steinhardt, Neil Turok, and Roger Penrose endorse it? The universe could be eternally expanding and contracting, stretching back into infinity, in accordance with some extra-universal law which is completely beyond our comprehension. Even time itself was created in the Big Bang, after all, so who’s to say that there needs to be a definitive beginning? I’m not saying these things are definitely the case - the point is, we simply don’t know. So it would be very presumptuous to say that the universe began to exist.

It’s also worth mentioning that while Pro cites the laws of thermodynamics to bat away models of the pre-Big Bang universe such as the oscillating universe theory, he then goes on to lay out a definition of God which is completely incongruous with the laws of physics. To play off my opponent’s example, is God slowly running out of energy, since he stated that the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to everything? My opponent could retort that God is immaterial and spaceless, and is therefore not subject to the laws of physics, but then how could he wield the laws of physics so confidently to attack models of a pre-Big Bang universe? Our laws of physics only describe the universe from right after the point of the Big Bang - any earlier than that, they have nothing to say. Not to mention, who is to say that something needs to be timeless to create time, spaceless to create space, etc? You need to lay a lot more logical groundwork to prove something like that, especially with the sudden inversion in logic at the end: “Only information can create information”. I could just as easily say:
The laws of physics could not have always existed for if they did, they may as well not have existed. If they do exist(as they do) then they would need a writer, and that writer would be God.
“The thing that created the universe must be:

  • Human - for only human beings can create and process information
  • Large - for it must be greater than the sum of all matter
  • From a cold place - for it created heat
  • Generous - for creating the universe requires a tremendous expense of energy
  • Jolly - for it created happiness
Therefore, Santa Claus created the universe.”

Call it absurd, but this argument has no less logical backing than what my opponent is asserting. We cannot simply will things into existence through wordplay.
This is purely ridiculous, you are comparing apples to oranges here. First of all "creating joy" does not carry the same meaning as creating the universe because the feeling of joy as a feeling in the catalogue of feelings has always existed with the human race and not made by Santa Claus when he arrived. Santa did not create heat-heat already existed when Saint Nicholas was born. Santa is not a creator God. You have just committed a false analogy.

And even if we put aside these criticisms of Pro’s argument and take it at face value, the God he has supposedly proven has nothing to do with the God that was established in the definition. He claims that this argument proves the existence of an immensely powerful, timeless, immaterial, spaceless, personal being. However, this doesn’t even touch on the question of whether this being is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, as the definition laid out. In order to satisfy the burden of proof, Pro would have to demonstrate that this being he is speaking of is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. By definition, a being that lacks any of these three qualities is not God.
God created all the moral standards and since he is omnipotent then he can will to follow these laws without flaw, therefore God can't be evil. You can't break the law in an anarchical society because there is no law to break.
The only one of these qualities that Pro has touched on is omnipotence, yet “immensely powerful” does not mean “infinitely powerful”. Pro also has yet to prove that this being is all-knowing and possesses infinite goodness. It is difficult to see how this last quality, in particular, follows in any way from the axioms that have been established. This segues into my own affirmative argument against the existence of God.
Having the power to create a universe and omnipotence are very similar, if a being can create a universe then they can make anything they will.

Assumption (1): God exists.
        Assumption (1a): God is all-knowing.
        Assumption (1b): God is all-powerful.
        Assumption (1c): God is perfectly loving.
        Assumption (1d): Any being that did not possess all three of the above properties would not be God.
Premise (2): Evil exists.
Premise (3): An all-knowing being would be aware of the existence of evil.
Premise (4): An all-powerful being would be able to eliminate evil.
Premise (5): A perfectly loving being would desire to eliminate evil.
Conclusion (6): Evil does not exist. (from (1),(3),(4),(5))
Contradiction: But evil does exist. (from (2))
Conclusion (7): There is no being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving. (from (2),(3),(4),(5))
Conclusion (8): God does not exist. (from (7),(1d))
We live in a world where children regularly die of cancer, innocent people are struck by illness and starvation and war, and earthquakes and tsunamis obliterate homes, fes communities, and churches indiscriminately. This only scratches the surface of the suffering and evil that humans endure all over the world, on a daily basis. I contend that this suffering would be impossible if an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being existed, and therefore, no such being exists. The key qualifier is “omnibenevolent”.
Ah yes the problem of evil - how many times have I heard this song and dance before. I must warn you, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you use this argument. Even atheist philosophers have acknowledged this arguments flaws. What objective moral standards are there for you to judge what is evil without God? If any objective set of laws for goodness exist without God then what scientific proof do you have for their existence? Many famous atheists before you have pondered this question and decided that objective standards for good and evil don't exist.

Here are three theodicies:

  • The famous Augustinian theodicy holds that God chose to give people free will, and people freely chose to do evil; the evil that we suffer is a consequence of that. If God forced everyone to obey him, then God would be a dictator, and dictators aren't usually good people. God did not will to be a dictator so he gave mankind freedom.
  • Irenaean theodicy holds that the evil that we suffer is purgative, that is, we suffer in order that through suffering we might be cleansed of sin and become good humans in the eyes of God. A good analogy would be taking a vaccine, It hurts will the needle is in you, but after you take it you become immune to a specific pathogen. 
  • The book of Job theodicy holds that we shouldn't expect to gain a full understanding of God's actions since it is based on the omniscience of God. We humans are limited in intelligence, wisdom, and perception and God is omniscient. Think of it as meeting a fat man, at first you might think "This man can't be a professional athlete!" but when you learn that this obese man is a Japanese sumo wrestler, then your mind might completely change.
It is logically impossible for an evil God to exist:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRG4W61IHHI

Listen to atheist philosophers, the problem of evil is a bad argument for God's nonexistence.
Phenenas's avatar
Phenenas
Con
#4
Thank you for the quick response, Pro. However, there seems to be a problem. The first section of my argument seems to have been copied and pasted verbatim by him, and I cannot find any response to my rebuttals of points 1 and 2 of Pro’s opening argument. If Pro wishes to respond to these points in the final round, he may.

Pro did briefly respond to my critique of his use of the laws of thermodynamics, which I will quote here:

“The laws of physics could not have always existed for if they did, they may as well not have existed. If they do exist(as they do) then they would need a writer, and that writer would be God.”
I’m not entirely sure how that relates to my point or how to respond to that. If my opponent admits that the laws of physics could not always have existed, then why is it impossible that the cyclical model of the universe is true? Pro has stated earlier that the 2nd law of thermodynamics disproves a cyclical model - yet here, he admits that the laws of physics have not always existed, meaning the cyclical model is entirely plausible, barring other objections. He also states that the laws of physics would need a “writer”. This is simply an assertion that already assumes the first cause argument is true, and I have already addressed this in my rebuttal.

“This is purely ridiculous, you are comparing apples to oranges here.”
I will admit that I made the Santa Claus analogy mainly to highlight the absurdity of this particular part of Pro’s opening argument. The logic isn’t completely airtight, I will admit, but neither is Pro’s serious rendering of it. Saying something like “God must be timeless, for he created time” might sound nice and poetic, but it doesn’t prove anything. A human can create another human. A machine can create another machine. Things can create things that are like themselves. And as I’ve mentioned, once the list gets to, “Personal - for only information can create information”, the logic gets turned on its head. To go along with the rest of the list’s logic, the correct definition would be “Informationless, since it created information”. But instead there is this strange assertion that only information can create information. Merriam-Webster defines “information” as “knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction”. Clearly, information is a subjective human experience, and it is a passive object. Information doesn’t create other information at all - humans create it, by observing the world, coming up with theories, and sharing it with fellow humans. Pro’s third point in round 1 consists of assertions at best, and plain falsehoods at worst.

It is also worth noting that my opponent has not yet come any closer to proving that the “immensely powerful, timeless, spaceless, etc.” being is also omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, which I was hoping he would do, because it is essential to proving the resolution of the debate. Hopefully Pro will address this all-important point in the final round.

“God created all the moral standards and since he is omnipotent then he can will to follow these laws without flaw, therefore God can't be evil.”
This brings up another classic philosophical dilemma. Does God approve of something because it is good, or is it good because God approves of it? If the former is true, then there is an objective standard of morality outside of God, and we can simply ignore God and appeal to this standard directly. If the latter is true, then it becomes a meaningless tautology to say that God is good. If goodness is defined as whatever God does, then saying “God is good” really means “God does whatever God does” or “God is God”. So then God’s rule is arbitrary, based on might and power, as with all tyrants throughout history, and religion is akin to cowering in fear before this celestial despot.

“Having the power to create a universe and omnipotence are very similar, if a being can create a universe then they can make anything they will.”
We are in a debate, my friend. “Very similar” isn’t enough. It may be enough for someone who’s on the fence and already agrees with your general view, but I am explicitly arguing against it. Again, you have not demonstrated how this being explicitly meets the qualifications of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, as laid out in your definition.

“What objective moral standards are there for you to judge what is evil without God?”
The debate over moral objectivity is a different one entirely, and it’s one we do not have time to get to here. Nor is it relevant enough to warrant it. Perhaps another time. For the purposes of this debate, I have been using a banal definition of evil, “something which is harmful or undesirable”, per Google. Whether or not I believe in objective moral standards is irrelevant to my main point, which is this: people suffer unnecessarily and randomly, which should be impossible if an all-knowing, all-powerful, infinitely-good being exists. It is not necessary to believe in an objective moral standard to make this observation.

And to the three theodicies:

1. First of all, we can agree that humans are not completely free. For example, we do not have the ability to fly by flapping our arms, or shrink ourselves to the size of a nickel, or create pancakes out of thin air. We are still bound by the laws of reality, which, according to theism, were created by God. So we are partially free, but within a set of certain parameters. But why does freedom require the ability to harm others? God has already decided to set parameters on what actions humans can take, yet if God was truly omnibenevolent, wouldn’t he set up the structure of the universe such that people could not do evil to one another? Why would he not do this if he was completely capable of it? And so we return to the problem of evil. Not to mention that this only applies to evil done by man to man - free will doesn't excuse natural disasters which aren’t caused by humans at all.

2. If the evil we suffer is purgative, then we should all suffer equally. But this is clearly not the case. Some people live short, horrible lives filled with torture, other people live in luxury and comfort for virtually their entire existence. And this is not correlated in any way with how sinful each person is. Secondly, if the point of suffering is to strengthen our religious faith, then clearly it doesn’t work very well. Many people have been driven to religious doubt and questioning by great disasters and tragedies such as the Holocaust and the 9/11 attacks.

3. This defense effectively amounts to abandoning the claim of God’s goodness. If God allows evil for reasons unknown to us, what grounds do theists have for judging him to be morally good? Making that determination requires at least some understanding of motive and intent. If we have no idea why God does what he does, and the reasons for God’s actions are incomprehensible to us, then to be consistent we have to say we do not know whether he is good or evil. Many theists do not hesitate to ascribe benevolent intentions to God when they believe he has done something that benefits them. But when there is an event that would cast doubt on God’s goodness, such as a tsunami or a pandemic, they draw back and claim we cannot understand God’s motives. That is what we call special pleading.

I believe this is sufficient to defend the problem of evil as a genuine problem, notwithstanding vague appeals to unnamed “atheist philosophers” who apparently think it’s a bad argument. I will reiterate once again that Pro has failed to respond to my critique of his first two points, and has yet to connect the being he described in round 1 with God as laid out in the definition.
Round 3
Conservallectual's avatar
Conservallectual
Pro
#5
argument 1:

Definitions:

God: A Maximally Great Being(MGB). If something was greater than God then that being would be God.

MGB: An omnipotent(all powerful), omniscient(all knowing), omnibenevolent(morally perfect) being in every possible world.

Possible world: a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been.

The three types of beings:

* A necessary being: A being that exists in every possible world. Examples would be numbers/quantities, shape definitions, etc.

* Contingent being: A being that exists in some possible worlds. A being can logically exist and also logically not exist. An example would be a unicorn.

* impossible being: A being that cannot exist in any possible worlds because it is logically incoherent. Examples include married bachelors, polygons with less than 2 sides, squared circles, the smell of blue.

the argument:

1.  It is possible for an MGB(God) to exist. There is nothing too logically coherent about the concept of an MGB for it to not exist.
2. If it is possible for an MGB to exist, then an MGB exists in some possible world.
3. If an MGB exists in some possible world then it exists in every possible world. For an MGB to be maximally great, then it would have to be maximally great in every possible world.
5. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world. Our world is a possible world.
6. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then an MGB actually exists.

But can't we parody this argument to say that a maximally great and metaphysically necessary pizza exists? The answer is NO. Why? Well:

* There are no objective standards for the greatness of a pizza. Everybody's tongue is different, the pizza that I like may different than your taste.
* A metaphysically necessary pizza cannot cease to exist, and because of that it can't be eaten.


Argument 2

1. Our universe is filled with fine tuning. The universe is filled to the brink with constants so precise that if it was off by even an atom sized bit, then we would not exist. Here examples:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_physical_constants

One of these universal constants is the critical density of the universe. If the constant critical density was off by even 1:10^15 then we could not exist. This is like having a planet made out pennies, paint only one red, blind-folding a person and asking the person to pick the red penny. This can also be compared to a slot machine with 1 million disks and hoping that all of the disks line up at the same image. 

The cosmological constant is even more precise, being finely tuned to 1:10^120. So this would that if this constant was off by even a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion then the universe would expand too quickly or not fast enough - and we would not exist.

2. Such extreme precision cannot happen by chance, If you put all these finely tuned constants together then the odds of them all happening by accident is far beyond extremely rare. This is good evidence for an intelligent designer but let's consider other possibilities, such as the multiverse. If there are an infinite amount of other universes with different properties and different laws and different values of the basic constants of physics. First of all, let me first rule out the possibilities of an infinite number of universes. The problem with an infinite number of universes is that  infinite quantities do not exist in the real, physical world. Imagine this multiverse to be a hotel with an infinite amount of rooms and an infinite amount of guests; each guest is 1 universe. So when a new guest comes in - aka a new universe is born - then all the other guests would move 1 room up. 1 + infinity = infinity, this is an absurdity. Therefore only a finite number of universes can exist. So in this finite multiverse what other problems do we have? Well we would need fine tuning for the way the universes are born to allow for an innumerable amount of possibilities. We would also need to use fine tuning for anything in the multiverse to exist. Also having an innumerable amount of universes to explain ours is contrary to Occam's razor which states that causes to be multiplied beyond necessity or that the amount of assumptions should not be more than necessary. An infinite amount of universes makes way more assumptions than 1 intelligent designer.

3. Because the intelligent designer is the better and simpler than the intelligent designer - aka God - exists.

Phenenas's avatar
Phenenas
Con
#6
Thank you for your final argument, Pro. It seems that my opponent has abandoned our previous arguments and instead advanced two new ones in the final round. I will respond to each of these and then give a closing statement.

1. Ontological Argument

As I have said before, we cannot simply will things into existence through wordplay. The ontological argument tries to do exactly that. The argument’s absurdity has been well-documented by various philosophers, such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Even Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Catholic theologian of all, criticized it.

To answer Pro’s version of the argument, it is not so self-evident that God’s existence is possible. I have just demonstrated why the problem of evil throws serious doubt on the question of whether a maximally great being exists. Second, the argument can be used to prove all sorts of absurdities, despite Pro’s one example and assertion that it does not work. Pro claims that there are no objective standards for the greatness of pizza. How about other beings that do possess objective standards of greatness, such as Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, and Ra? Or will Pro only accept those objective standards which apply to the Christian God? If that’s the case, the whole argument is begging the question, and is completely circular. And even then, we could turn the argument on its head: is it not possible to conceive a maximally evil being into existence in the exact same way, a sort of twin brother who is just as powerful as God but infinitely malevolent? That would at least explain some things. Or, instead of a maximally delicious pizza, a maximally hot pizza? Surely there is an objective scale of hot and cold, that cannot be denied. Or a maximally red car, a maximally bouncy trampoline, or a maximally intelligent horse. And furthermore, the “objective scale” Pro is speaking of is completely made-up and theoretical. I could just as easily invent a scale of my own and prove something exists by the standards of my own scale. But I will move on before I belabor the point.

2. Argument from Fine Tuning

This argument does not at all refute the idea that everything has been the result of chance. The way things are is simply the way things turned out to be. Theologians can harumph all they want about how infinitely mathematically unlikely it is, but inevitably the universe was going to go some way and settle on one of these vigintillion possibilities. And are we humans really so egocentric that we can’t imagine a universe without us? If one of the numbers were off, we simply wouldn’t exist, or there would be vastly different life-forms instead of us, or no life at all. This argument comes with a built-in assumption that humans are special, inevitable, that the universe had to create us somehow. But do away with this fallaciously smuggled-in assumption, and fine-tuning isn’t the least bit contradictory with the idea that we were all simply a cosmic accident. And it’s worth mentioning: the intelligent designer Pro claims this argument proves does not by necessity have to be a maximally great being. By the standards Pro set out, it would probably have to be very powerful and very intelligent, but it would not have to be omnipotent, omniscient, nor indeed omnibenevolent.

3. Conclusion

In round 1, Pro laid out an argument that he claims proves the existence of what I will call a Very Powerful Being - which “sounds a lot like God” (in his words) but does not meet the criteria of God as laid out in the description. I refuted this argument and laid out a case that God does not exist based on the problem of evil. In round 2, Pro did not respond to a large chunk of my rebuttal, instead pointing out what he saw as individual flaws, but did not undermine my larger point. He did, however, thankfully respond to my problem of evil argument. I responded to these in kind, and criticized Pro for failing to connect the Very Powerful Being with God, and encouraged him to do so in the final round, since at this time he had yet to prove the basic proposition of the debate. In round 3, instead of building off of what has already been established, Pro chose to ignore my responses and advance two entirely new arguments in the final round.

The only time Pro has actually argued for the existence of a maximally great being was in this round, with the ontological argument. I have objected to it now, but Pro’s framing of it ignores objections I had already made previously in the debate, such as the problem of evil. Throughout the rest of this debate, Pro’s arguments, flawed as they are, pointed to the existence of a Very Powerful Being - and Pro simply expects the reader to extend him a whole lot of charity and believe that this is god-like enough to be God. I have continually insisted that Pro stick to his own definition and argue for this Being’s omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. It can be said that Pro attempted this in the final round, but only by abandoning everything that has been said beforehand and advancing two new arguments.

I would ask the voters to keep these facts in mind when they cast their ballots. And thank you, Pro, for having this debate with me.