Instigator / Con
Akrasia's avatar
14
Akrasia
1500
rating
1
debates
100.0%
won
Topic
#4561

Does God Exist?

Status
Finished

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

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
6
0
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
2

After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

Akrasia
Tags
God
Philosophy
Problem of Evil
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two weeks
Max argument characters
12,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Pro
Nickjken's avatar
8
Nickjken
1501
rating
2
debates
25.0%
won
Description

Does God Exist?
This is a debate on the existence of God. Pro will argue that God probably exists whereas Con will argue that God probably does not exist.

Structure:
The first-round is for opening statements by Pro and Con (no rebuttals).
The second round is for the first rebuttals.
The third round is for second rebuttals and concluding remarks.

Definitions:

God:
"A person without a body (i.e., a spirit) who necessarily is eternal, perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and the creator of all things” [1].

Theism:
the belief that God, so defined, exists [2].

Atheism:
the belief that God, so defined, does not exist [3].

Sources:
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer/P160/defining-god
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBEKUBOMA_0

Round 1
Akrasia's avatar
Akrasia
Con
#1
Introduction
In this debate, I will argue that God probably does not exist. The argument I will use to justify this claim is the evidential argument from evil. With that said, I will begin. 

The Argument from Evil
The argument from evil starts from the observation that there is a great deal of evil in the world. By evil, we just mean anything bad in the world that causes suffering and pain. Thus, the problem of evil is really the problem of suffering. There are two types of evils in the world. The first type of evil is the kind that is caused by other people such as Hitler’s genocidal acts of the Holocaust or Stalin’s communist policies that resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people, many of whom were children.
     The second type of evil is natural evil, which is suffering that is not caused by people but instead has its origin in impersonal phenomenon such as natural disasters and disease. When it comes to natural evils, animal suffering is particularly pronounced. Herbivorous animals literally get eaten alive and maimed by the carnivorous ones and the other animals generally often die of diseases, starvation, and dehydration. Since the origin of species, 99% of all animals to have ever lived have gone extinct (Jablonski). In other words, there has been more suffering and death on earth than there has been pleasure and worthwhile existences. Moreover, even if there were more pleasures in the world than pain, pain almost always trumps the pleasures that we experience. As Arthur Schopenhauer once said:  

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other (goodreads).  

In short, there is a great deal of horrendous pain and suffering in the world. What are we to make of this? The strategy of the atheist here is to use the existence of evil as a counterexample to the claim that there exists a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. Just as crabgrass on the golf green counts against the existence of an efficient greenskeeper, so too the existence of evil counts against the existence of a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good (Howard-Snyder). If God exists, he has the power, knowledge, and the strongest desire to prevent evil. So why does he not? The atheist claims that the best explanation is because there is no God.  
     Traditionally, there have been two different versions of the argument from evil. One is the logical argument from evil, which claims that the existence of God and the existence of evil are logically incompatible or contradictory. Under this view, the claim that God and evil coexist is like the concept of a married bachelor: it’s logically impossible. The second version of the argument from evil is the evidential one, which claims that it is logically possible for God and evil to coexist, but that it is unlikely. Under this evidential version of the argument from evil, the atheist accepts that there might be some justified evils that God allows but thinks that there has likely been at least one gratuitous evil in the history of the world. In this debate, I will be defending the evidential argument from evil.  

The Evidential Argument from Evil
Following Michael Huemer, I will use the following thought experiment to motivate the evidential problem of evil: 

John Wayne Gacy. Suppose you are the next-door neighbor of John Wayne Gacy. You regularly seem him drag little boys into his house where he rapes, tortures, and strangles his victims to death. You observe him take the dead bodies of these little boys and bury them in his crawl space. As things stand, you can stop him at no cost to yourself, such as calling the police. What should you do? (Huemer, p. 166).  

The answer to this question is obvious: you would totally call the police and put a stop to this monster. If God exist, why would he not do the same thing? As Michael Huemer pointed out: 

If there is a God, He is regularly in a position just like me in that example. Terrible things are happening to people all the time – including being tortured and killed by psychopaths, among many other intolerable ordeals. God, if He exists, sees all these things happening with perfect clarity. He could easily, instantly put a stop to them, at no cost to Himself. He is morally perfect and loves all of us deeply. Given all this, it makes no sense that He stands idly by. There is one obvious explanation for why God isn’t stopping horrific suffering: He doesn’t exist (ibid, p. 166).  

For theism to be true, it would have to be the case that there has not been one instance of gratuitous evil *in the entire history of sentient existence on this planet. * That means that literally every instance of suffering that happened was not gratuitous, that God had a morally justifiable reason for allowing that suffering to occur. But as the John Wayne Gacy example illustrates, that claim is intuitively implausible.  

Conclusion
In this debate, I have presented the evidential argument from evil in support of the claim that God probably does not exist. There is more to be said about why the non-existence of God is the best explanation for why evil exists in the world, but that would be responding to rebuttals by the theists (which is prohibited in the first round). For now, that is all I have. 

Sources



Knowledge,Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy by Michael Huemer. Link tobook:https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Reality-Value-Mostly-Philosophy/dp/B0BC2FPBJH/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Nickjken's avatar
Nickjken
Pro
#2
During this debate I will be defending the position that God, as he has been defined previously, does exist (we’ll call this position “theism”). To defend theism, I will argue that based on the existence of the universe and the origin of the universe, God does exist. 

My first argument for God’s existence, that God’s existence can be concluded from the existence of the universe, will be known as the argument from contingency. A deductive argument that defends my position can be presented as follows:
  1. Everything that exists has an explanation for its existence, either in the necessity of its nature or an external cause that it is contingent upon.
  2. If the universe exists, it does not exist by the necessity of its nature. 
  3. The universe exists.
  4. Therefore, the universe does not exist by the necessity of its nature. (2-3)
  5. Therefore, the universe is explained by an external cause that it is contingent upon. (1-4)
This argument has three premises that I must defend. If lines 1-3 are true, then lines 4-5 follow by necessity. Once I have defended all three of the premises, I will explain how this external cause of the universe has the classical attributes of God.

Before I defend the argument, I will define a few of my terms. I will define the universe as “all of time, space, and matter” (NASA). This definition of the universe, which is meant to include all physical reality, is the most common definition in contemporary science and philosophy. The next terms I will define are necessary and contingent beings. Anything that exists will fall into one of these two categories. A being that exists necessarily is simply a being that exists due to the necessity of its nature and thus cannot fail to exist. Examples of beings that exist necessarily are numbers, mathematical sets, and various abstract objects. If you think of any of these examples, they all exist not because something else caused them to exist, but because their nature entails their existence. For example, nothing caused the number two to exist, but because of what the number two is, it has to exist. According to theists, God is an example of a necessary being. Contingent beings, on the other hand, do not have to exist and are dependent on something else for their existence. Examples of this include humans, planets, and physical objects. Notice how under various circumstances, these beings could have failed to exist.

Now, on to defending the argument. The first premise is extremely modest and is thus very defensible. The first half of the premise, that everything that exists has an explanation for its existence, seems intuitive and self-evident. First, in observing the natural world, we consistently find explanations of things' existence and never find examples of things that exist without an explanation. Common experience of the natural world gives good reason to affirm that things can’t simply exist without an explanation or reason. Second, we have no good reason to affirm that something could exist without an explanation. Third, if there was no need for an explanation of something’s existence, we would have to reject how we understand cause and effect relationships and we wouldn’t be able to draw conclusions by testing a hypothesis since we would expect to find things that exist without an explanation. Even if we cannot figure out what the explanation is, it’s not difficult to conclude that something does have an explanation. The second half of the premise does not need to be defended since if the first half is true, the second half is necessarily true. If something needs an explanation of its existence, the only way it could be explained is by itself (a necessary being) or something else (a contingent being). There is no other way it could potentially be explained.

The second premise is also modest. First, since the universe is composed of matter, which is simply a collection of fundamental particles that cannot be broken down any further, a completely different set of particles could have existed which would have given us a different universe (Craig). Second, there is no positive reason to believe that the universe exists necessarily.  To say that the universe exists necessarily, we would need to find something about the universe that leads us to believe it must exist and couldn’t have failed to exist. Third, since an essential attribute of all the contents of the universe is contingency (people, planets, and other physical objects), it follows that an attribute of the sum of all those objects (all physical reality, or the universe) is also contingency. The final reason I will give to believe the universe is not necessary (thus making it contingent) is the origin of the universe. I will defend the origin of the universe in my next argument, but for now just know that anything that begins to exist must be contingent since something that began to exist once failed to exist.

The third premise is perhaps the most modest. The existence of the universe can be reasonably concluded due to our experience of the external world.

After defending three modest premises, we arrive at two conclusions. The second conclusion, that the universe is contingent upon an external cause, gives us insight into what the explanation of the universe is like. The most important characteristic of the explanation of the universe is that it is necessary. This is because of the impossibility of an infinite regress of causes, which leads to a need for an uncaused first cause that explains everything else (an infinite number of causes is impossible for the same reason an actual infinite and passing through an infinite number of past events is impossible, which is explained in my next argument). If it explains everything else then it cannot be explained by anything but itself, thus making it necessary and uncaused. Since the universe contains all of space, time, and matter; we can conclude that the explanation of the universe is spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Since it is necessary and timeless, we can also conclude that it is eternal and unchangeable. Since the cause is the explanation of everything else, it must be powerful over everything, knowledgeable about everything, and the creator of everything else. Thus we arrive at a necessary, uncaused, spaceless, timeless, immaterial, eternal, unchangeable, powerful, intelligent creator. 

My second argument for the existence of God, pertaining to the origin of the universe, is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument (Craig). The deductive argument is as follows:

  1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Premise one seems undeniable to any genuine truth seeker. Our everyday experience in the world provides evidence for the truth of the first premise. If things could come into existence without a cause, this begs the question as to why we never see anything come into existence from nothing. Furthermore, it is important to note that we have no positive reason to believe that things can just come into existence without a cause! Another factor to consider in considering this premise is that our knowledge of cause and effect relationships entails that everything that begins to exist has a cause. The core question one must answer when assessing this premise is this: can something come into existence from nothing, or must something come into existence from something else?

Premise two can be defended with both philosophical reasons as well as scientific reasons. To deny premise two is to say that the universe never came into existence but rather has an infinite past. To say that the universe has an infinite past means that there is an actually infinite number of past events. An actual infinite means there is an infinite number of something. This contrasts with potential infinity, which is a kind of infinity that is simply an ideal limit that can never be reached. However, belief in both an actual infinite and an infinite past creates an issue. It’s problematic to say that you have an actually infinite number of anything since you could always have more more of that thing. Moreover, if the universe has an infinite past, then the number of past events that must be completed to arrive at today would be infinite. Passing though an actually infinite number of past events would be like counting from negative infinity to zero, one number at a time, which simply cannot be done. In the same way, it would be impossible to pass through an actually infinite series of past events in order to arrive at today. Infinity must be seen as a mere potential that can never be actualized. Therefore, due to the falsehood of the negation of premise two, premise two is true. The origin of the universe can also be demonstrated scientifically through the big bang theory. Since the big bang theory (the theory that all current and past matter in the universe came into existence at the same time, roughly 13.8 billion years ago and at this time all matter was compacted into a very small ball with high density and intense heat called a singularity which expanded into what we know today as the universe) is widely accepted in the scientific community (as well as the atheist community), I won’t dive into evidence for the theory unless my opponent provides objections to it (Williams). If the big bang is true, we arrive at a scientific demonstration that the universe did began to exist. It is important to note that the Big Bang does not explain what caused the universe to begin to exist, but rather THAT the universe did begin to exist. If the Big Bang is true, we’re forced to ask ourselves what external cause created the conditions that set the Big Bang into motion.

After defending the two premises of this argument, we have arrived at the conclusion that the universe has a cause. Now, we must ask ourselves what attributes this cause has. Since we know that the universe is all of space, time, and matter, we can say that the cause of the universe is space less, timeless, and immaterial. This cause would also have to be uncaused since we cannot have an infinite regress of causes and must eventually arrive back to an uncaused first cause (this is true for the same reason an actually infinite number of anything is impossible, which has been previously addressed). We also know this being is powerful over everything since it had the ability to create all physical reality. The final attribute the cause of the universe must contain based on this argument is personhood. Since the cause of the universe is timeless (and thus eternal) and the universe itself is temporal, we arrive at an eternal cause with a temporal effect. Typically when a cause exists that is sufficient to bring about a certain effect, the existence of that cause entails the existence of that effect. In other words, if the cause of the universe was eternal, one would naturally come to believe that the universe was also eternal. However, we know from premise two that the universe is not eternal. This situation allows us to conclude that the cause of the universe is a personal agent with freedom of the will. With the cause being a personal agent, the cause can exist without the effect also existing because without the cause’s creative decree, the cause exists without the effect. It’s not until the agent makes a free decision to create that the effect comes into existence. After defending the premises of this argument and arriving at their logical conclusions, we arrive at an uncaused person that transcends time, space, and matter and is immensely powerful! This includes many of the characteristics that we have attributed to God.

Sources:


Craig, W. L., Dr. (2010). On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. David C. Cook.

Round 2
Akrasia's avatar
Akrasia
Con
#3
I would like to thank my friend, Nick, for his opening statements. 

Kalam Cosmological Argument 
The Kalam argument is an a posterior argument for the existence of God. This means that it uses scientific observations and our experiences of the world to justify the claim that God exist. In this case, the proponent of this argument claims that the best explanation for the existence of the universe is grounded in the claim that God is responsible. This is a powerful argument since it starts from uncontroversial views about the cause and effect phenomenon we experience everyday and the Big Bang cosmological model that has reached a consensus among physicists today as the explanation for the existence of our universe. Nonetheless, I think the Kalam argument is unsuccessful for the following reasons. 
     One is that, first, premise one of the Kalam argument rests on an implicit assumption that needs to be defended. Nick claims that "Our everyday experience in the world provides evidence for the truth of the first premise." But our everyday experience of the world does not justify premise one because what we observe is pre-existing material used to form objects. For example, when someone claims that my phone began to exist, we do not mean that the creator of this phone created it out of nothing. What we mean is that the creator worked with pre-existing materials to make my phone. But when Nick claims that God created the universe, he means that God created it out of nothing. But it is not at all obvious how this is metaphysically possible. If it is metaphysically possible, then Nick needs to give an argument for it. Accordingly, Nick cannot use the material creation we observe around us as evidence that something can be created from nothing. The problem with the first premise of the Kalam, in short, is that it uses uncontroversial cases of material creation (which is something we can be confident occurs) as evidence for a metaphysically controversial claim that something can be created out of nothing (something that we should not be confident in since we have never observed it). 
     The next problem with the Kalam argument is with premise two. In defense of this premise, Nick gives a philosophical and a scientific reason for why the universe began to exist. With regards to the former, he claims that "To deny premise two is to say that the universe never came into existence but rather has an infinite past." But this is false because the universe can exist as a timeless entity. But what does that mean?
     In the ontology of time, there are two different competing views. The first one is called presentism and it claims that only the present moment is real. The past no longer exist and the future does not yet exist. Drawing on analogy put forth by theoretical physicist Brian Greene, under presentism time is like a river which constantly flows and fluctuates. Once we "reach" the present, the past no longer exist and the future does not exist either because we have not "reached" it yet.  By contrast, eternalism holds that all moments in time exist simultaneously and, for this reason, the past, present, and future moments are all equally real. On this view of time, time is not like a flowing river but is instead like a frozen river. As Greene puts the point:

"Under close scrutiny, the flowing river of time more closely resembles a giant block of ice with every moment forever frozen into place" (p. 141). 

Under this eternalist ontology of time, there is not an infinite series of moments but instead there is a finite series of moments that exist simultaneously (KT45). This would make the universe like a film reel. When the light hits one of the images on the film reel, we call that moment the present. But if we were to take out the film reel, we would observe that all the moments on the film exist simultaneously with one another and represent an eternal now (KT45). 

But how does eternalism challenge the second premise of the Kalam argument when it claims that the universe began to exist? Dr. Craig, who popularized the Kalam argument, explains it well in an interview. He says:

[on eternalism] things don't come into being and go out of being, rather they just are all real. They just exist. (2:25- 2:33) ... On a B-theory of time the universe never truly comes into being at all. The whole four-dimensional space-time manifold just exists tenselessly, and the universe has a beginning only in the sense that a meter-stick has a beginning prior to the first centimeter. Although the space-time manifold is intrinsically temporal in that one of its four dimensions is time, nonetheless it is extrinsically timeless, in that it does not exist in an embedding hyper-time but exists tenselessly, neither coming into nor going out of being. The four-dimensional space-time manifold is in this latter sense eternal (quoted in Carrier, p. 89). 

This brings us to Nick's scientific claims about the Big Bang theory. He says "It is important to note that the Big Bang does not explain what caused the universe to begin to exist, but rather THAT the universe did begin to exist." But it is a mistake to view the Big Bang theory in this way. Just because the universe had a beginning, this does not mean it came into existence at the beginning. Going back to the film reel analogy, the film also has a beginning and it also has an end. But that does not mean the film *came into existence* at the beginning nor does it go out of existence at the end. Remember, everything just exist as an eternal now. Hence, the second premise of the Kalam argument, like the first premise of it, contains an implicit assumption that needs to be defended. Namely, that presentism is the correct ontology of time. Until Nick defends this implicit assumption in the second premise of the Kalam argument, he has given us no good reason to accept it.
     Moreover, there is a plausible scientific reason grounded in Einstein's special relativity to accept the eternalist ontology of time. This has to do with the phenomenon of simultaneity. Simultaneity occurs when two events occur at the same time while one object is at rest and the other is in motion. For example, suppose that Nick and I turn on the lights in two different rooms at the same time while standing (being at rest).  If presentism is true, there should be a single objective fact about whether turning on the lights in two different rooms occurs at the same time because they both happen in the present (17:40-18:18). But according to Einstein's special relativity, there is no objective fact about whether two events occur at the same time because it depends on where the observer's location is in space.  Thus, if someone is moving (in motion) and observes Nick and I turn on the lights, it will not appear to him that these two actions occur at the same time because he occupies a different location in space. The implication of Einstein's special relativity is that one cannot say that this moment counts as real because it is in the present and a past event does not count as real because it is in the past. This is consistent with the metaphysical claim of eternalism because this ontology of time denies that there is an objective fact about which time is present: it depends on your location. What counts as present for one person will not necessarily be present for another. In short, the problem with presentism is that it rest on a false empirical claim about how time works. 
     On a different note, it is possible that my friend, Nick, will bring up the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem as a different line of scientific evidence that the universe came into existence at the beginning. This theorem claims that "any universe that has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past spacetime boundary" (Vilenkin, pp.330-331). Theists like Dr. Craig have taken this theorem as evidence that the universe must have come into existence at the beginning. But this line of argument would do nothing to refute the eternalist view of the universe I laid out because eternalism does not claim that the universe is infinite in the past but instead has a finite series of moments that exist simultaneously. Secondly, as Sean Carroll pointed out, this theorem does not say the universe must have come into existence at the beginning. In a debate with Dr. Craig, he quotes Alan Guth, one of the authors of the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem as saying:

I don't know whether the universe had a beginning. I suspect the universe didn't have a beginning. It's very likely eternal - but nobody knows (1:05:17-1:05:55). 

Contingency Argument
Finally, I will look at Nick's argument from contingency. The argument from contingency claims that the universe is composed of contingent things and, therefore, there must be a necessary being to explain the existence of all contingent things. Since God satisfies the description of being a necessary being, God must exist. Let's look at the premises of this argument.
     The first premise of this argument claims that "Everything that exists has an explanation for its existence, either in the necessity of its nature or an external cause that it is contingent upon." In support of this premise, Nick says everything within the natural world has an explanation for its existence. He says: "First, in observing the natural world, we consistently find explanations of things' existence and never find examples of things that exist without an explanation. Common experience of the natural world gives good reason to affirm that things can’t simply exist without an explanation or reason." However, I think the first premise of the contingency argument can be challenged on the following grounds: why think that because everything *within* the universe has an explanation or reason for its existence, that *the universe as a whole* has an explanation or reason for its existence? To illustrate this with an example from Bertrand Russell, we know that everybody within the human race has a mother. But can we conclude from this mere fact that the human race as a whole has a mother? (13:55-14:25). No, we cannot draw that conclusion from this premise. Thus, Nick's reasoning in support of the first premise of the contingency argument commits the informal fallacy of composition: invalidly inferring the quality of the whole from the quality of the parts (Stearns). 

My Thoughts on Cosmological Arguments in General
However, suppose that all my criticisms above are mistaken and that either 1) The universe did begin to exist (the Kalam argument) or that 2) we need a necessary being to explain the existence of the universe (the Argument from Contingency). Even if all that is true, this does not justify the claim that God is responsible for the creation of the universe. After all, how do these cosmological arguments demonstrate that this God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect? On the most charitable assumptions, all these arguments show is that there is a God who is powerful and knowledgeable enough to create the universe. But it does not demonstrate that he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect. Indeed, the cosmological arguments do not even try to demonstrate that this God in question is morally perfect. This is why cosmological arguments (whether they be the Kalam or the Contingency versions) are at best arguments for deism rather than theism.

Conclusion
In this round, I have presented my objections to my friend's arguments for the existence of God. Nick is a super smart guy, so I know he will supply plausible replies to my objections that I probably have not considered or overlooked. I look forward to his responses. 

Sources in Comments 

Nickjken's avatar
Nickjken
Pro
#4
I would like to thank my friend Sam for his opening statement. Before I begin my response, I believe it is important to distinguish the different forms of the argument from evil against the existence of God. The two forms of the argument from evil are known as the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. This first version, the logical argument from evil, argues that the idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God is logically inconsistent with the evil we see in the world. The second version, the evidential argument from evil, is a much more modest version of the problem of evil which argues as Sam has stated that the evil we see in the world today makes in unlikely that God exists. While this second version is a more modest claim and thus has less to prove than the first version, it is important to note that this argument has less epistemic power since it is probabilistic, unlike the first version. Understanding that the goal of the argument is to demonstrate that it is unlikely that God exists is important to understanding how I will counter the argument.

The first problem with the argument from evil presented is that the argument actually has an effect opposite of its intent. Rather than showing that God probably does not exist, the existence of evil actually provides reason for us to believe God does exist! This is because in the absence of a God, there is no objective standard by which to measure good and evil. If God exists, we have an objective standard by which we can measure good and evil (Brake). As the morally perfect transcendent creator of the universe, our moral obligations derive from God’s divine commands (which themselves are an expression of his perfect nature). If God does exist, we can truly say things like rape, torture, and murder are objectively wrong because they violate the commandments of the transcendent moral lawgiver. However, if God does not exist, we are left without any standard by which to determine good and evil (Wallace). There’s no reason why the man who rapes, tortures, and murders little boys is any worse than the man who reports him to the police and stops him. Everything becomes subjective in the absence of a transcendent moral lawgiver. If morality is subjective, as is the case in the absence of God, then calling something evil really turns into saying you don’t like that thing. In the absence of objective morality, the problem of evil really turns into the problem of things some people dislike. It seems clear that our personal dislike of something in no way makes God’s existence unlikely! In the absence of God’s existence, the argument from evil goes away since there is no objective evil to make God’s existence unlikely. If we are to believe that there is objective good and evil (meaning there are moral values that are binding on us independent of anyone’s personal opinion on the matter), we are pointed to a transcendent moral lawgiver with many of the attributes of God. The proponent of the argument either needs to abandon their belief in objective good and evil and thus abandon the argument altogether or accept that there is a transcendent moral lawgiver that grounds objective moral values and duties. Therefore, the argument from evil actually provides positive reason to believe God exists.

The second problem with the argument from evil presented is that it requires us to make probability judgements far beyond our scope (Craig). While our limited knowledge would lead us to call the police in the scenario Sam described, God is not in the same position as us. Maybe, by calling the police, you prevented the cops from catching another criminal who would go on to murder dozens of people while the guy you just called the police on would have been caught the next day robbing a store before he could have hurt anymore children. In this case, your actions didn’t save any lives but actually cost dozens of lives! This is obviously hypothetical and is an extreme example but it demonstrates our limited scope of knowledge and what is known as the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect is the idea that small, seemingly trivial events may ultimately result in something with much larger consequences – in other words, they have non-linear impacts on very complex systems (Chandler). For instance, when a butterfly flaps its wings in India, that tiny change in air pressure could eventually cause a tornado in Iowa. Since God is all-knowing, he would have the full scope of all consequences of every action. We’re simply not in a position to make the judgement that God doesn’t have reasons for permitting suffering. It’s also important to recognize that the world we live in is full of creatures who continually rebel against the moral commands of God (if he exists) (Craig). It would be one thing to argue that there wouldn’t be such evil/suffering in a world with a God if creatures willingly obeyed him and didn’t exercise their own acts of evil, but it’s a whole different question when that God exists in a reality where his creatures continually rebel against him. 

The third reason this argument from evil fails is that it fails to note that God has no obligation to stop evil. As the ultimate authority on all matters with no external obligations binding on him, God has no obligation to alleviate our suffering or to give us a pleasure filled life (Huffling). It should be noted here that due to my Christian beliefs I would affirm that God desires to alleviate the suffering of all who repent of their wrongdoings and decide to follow Jesus as their King, but that’s done out of desire on God’s part, not obligation. Since there is no higher authority above God, he reserves the right to permit or alleviate suffering according to his infinite knowledge and wisdom. When we say God is “good” we’re not saying he’s good because he behaves well or conforms to some moral standard he’s obligated by (Ibid). When we say God is good we are saying that by his nature he is the essence and source of moral goodness and the source of moral obligation for all others. Under this corrected understanding of God’s goodness we understand that God is good because of who he is, not because of what he does (Ibid). This implies that there is no conflict between a morally perfect and loving God and the existence of evil/suffering.

The final point I will make is that since this argument is probabilistic, it must be taken into account along with arguments for God’s existence (in the case of the debate, the ones I have presented) (Craig). Even if this argument makes it less likely that God exists (which I’ve demonstrated is not the case), one must also factor in the increased likelihood of God’s existence based on arguments I have presented.

I hope it is clear after my rebuttal that the worse case scenario is that God’s existence is not affected by the existence of evil and at best God’s existence is actually more likely because of the existence of evil. I look forward to hearing my opponent's responses to my arguments.

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Round 3
Akrasia's avatar
Akrasia
Con
#5
Divine Command Theory
Nick's first objection to the evidential argument from evil is that, if God does not exist, there cannot be an objective standard for morality in order to judge actions as morally right, wrong, permissible, required and so on. Why is that? This is because the divine command theory is true. According to this meta-ethical view, an action is morally right, wrong, permissible, required, and so on because (and only because) God commands it.  Nick claims that "Everything becomes subjective in the absence of a transcendent moral lawgiver. If morality is subjective, as is the case in the absence of God, then calling something evil really turns into saying you don’t like that thing." From this premise, he draws the following conclusion "In the absence of God’s existence, the argument from evil goes away since there is no objective evil to make God’s existence unlikely." 
     In short, Nick is claiming that (from an ontological perspective) moral properties like evil cannot exist if God does not exist and, for this reason, the argument from evil is polemically toothless. This is because God's commandments are the only thing that can make a moral judgment about an action being evil true. If God does not exist, there is no truth-maker of moral claims and hence there is no evil. Despite the popularity of this objection to the evidential argument from evil among Christian apologists, it should be rejected for the following reasons. 
     One is that, first, divine command theory is a poorly motivated meta-ethical view. Why think that God is the only possible truth-maker of moral claims? We generally do not think that we need to posit the existence of God in order to justify the truth of other normative judgments such as in epistemology or logic. Nobody thinks, for example, that in order for the law of non-contradiction to be true, it has to be the case that God commands that we ought not make contradictions (Kagan, 16:00-17:17). Such judgments are true because of how the world is. Likewise, in epistemology, for a belief to count as unjustified seems to be a function of it having objectionable features that make its acceptance irrational. No appeal to God is necessary to explain this. The same thing is true of morality. Consider the act of torture. What makes this action wrong? According to divine command theory, this action is wrong because (and only because) God commands that this action not be done. But this is implausible. Such an action would seem to be wrong even if there was no God. Torture is wrong because of the features that this act has. Specifically, it causes horrible pain to the victim. Once again, just like in the realm of epistemology or logic, we do not need to appeal to God to explain, justify, or give reasons for the truth of our normative judgments. 
     The second problem with divine command theory is that it leads to moral absurdities. If an action is wrong because (and only because) God commands that action, this means that the action of torturing babies for fun would be morally required if God commanded that to be the case. But this is absurd. Therefore, divine command theory must be false. The theist might reply to this objection by saying that God would not command this sort of action because God is good. But this response is inadequate because it presupposes a standard of morality that is independent of God, which is precisely what the atheist maintains is the case: that morality does not depend on God's commands.
     Finally, an atheist need not commit himself to the existence of objective morality in order to run the argument from evil. Indeed, one can think that moral judgements are simply expressions of emotions or commands and that moral properties are non-existent. Let us therefore grant Nick’s claim for the sake of argument that, under atheism, calling an action evil is simply to express one’s negative attitude or dislike of that action being performed. Granting this assumption in no way undermines the argument from evil, since this argument, like I explained in my opening statements, is really the problem of suffering. Accordingly, all the atheist must point out is that God, if he exists, would have the strongest desire to prevent suffering. Since he does not prevent the suffering around us, the best explanation of this fact is that he probably does not exist. Notice how this claim is not at all normative: it is simply a claim about how God would behave given the psychology that he has. Nick says “In the absence of objective morality, the problem of evil really turns into the problem of things some people dislike. It seems clear that our personal dislike of something in no way makes God’s existence unlikely!” But if God exist, the theist would maintain that He dislikes John Wayne Gacy’s acts of child rape, torture, and murder just as much as we do. Given that he has the power, knowledge, and the strongest desire to stop such acts from occurring, why does he not? I am not making a new argument here. I am simply demonstrating how the argument from evil can be understood in a completely non-normative way. 
     (Note that I am not actually accepting the claim that there cannot be objective morality without appeal to God's commandments. I think I have made it clear above why divine command theory is implausible and, therefore, Nick has given us no good reason to believe why objective morality cannot exist unless God exist.) I will therefore continue to talk in moral terms like I did in my opening statements. 

Skeptical Theism
Nick's second objection to the evidential argument from evil is that God has a good reason for permitting the evil we observe around us, but we cannot know why. To motivate this claim, Nick says:

"While our limited knowledge would lead us to call the police in the scenario Sam described, God is not in the same position as us. Maybe, by calling the police, you prevented the cops from catching another criminal who would go on to murder dozens of people while the guy you just called the police on would have been caught the next day robbing a store before he could have hurt anymore children. In this case, your actions didn’t save any lives but actually cost dozens of lives!"

Granted, it is possible that calling the police on John Wayne Gacy would lead to worse consequences than not calling the police and that God allows bad things to  happen in order to bring about a greater good. In this case, the greater good would be catching the murderer who would go on to kill more innocent people. But if God has to allow horrible things to happen in order to bring about a greater good, then he is not all-powerful because he must be limited by some causal law. In the scenario that Nick described, there is no reason why an all-powerful being like God could not make both John Wayne Gacy and the other murderer drop dead with a heart attack, killing them both before they hurt anybody else.
     Moreover, the skeptical theist objection to the evidential problem of evil can be used to defend the existence of a perfectly evil God, which is absurd (Law). I take it that most people would think that belief in the existence of a perfectly evil God is absurd because the world contains too much love, laughter, and rainbows in order for us to plausibly believe that such a being exist. Surely, if a perfectly evil God existed, he would maximize pain and suffering to guarantee that nobody experiences any happiness. But suppose I am a firm believer in the existence of a perfectly evil God despite all the good in the world. How could I refute "the problem of good" as an objection to my belief in a perfectly evil God? I would use the same reasoning employed by skeptical theism: evil God allows good things in the world to happen in order to bring about a greater evil. But surely this response is implausible since there is no good reason why an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly evil God would need to set up the world this way. If he wanted a world filled with evil, he would probably create it that way without the need to have any good in the world at all. Likewise, if there were an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God, he would probably have no need to create a world where there is evil. Towards the end of his skeptical theist response, Nick says "Since God is all-knowing, he would have the full scope of all consequences of every action. We’re simply not in a position to make the judgement that God doesn’t have reasons for permitting suffering." 
     I agree it is entirely possible that God has good reasons for permitting the suffering we see around us that we have just not thought of yet. My response to that is.. so what? The version of the argument from evil I have presented here is evidential or probabilistic: it is not meant to serve as an irrefutable proof that the evils of the world demonstrate God's non-existence. As Michael Huemer pointed out, if we allowed this sort of response to deter us from drawing conclusions, then essentially no theory would ever be rejected (p. 168). When evidence is presented against a theory, its advocates could save it from being refuted by pointing out that perhaps there is some unknown explanation for the evidence that’s compatible with their theory (ibid p. 168). The result of such thinking would be that we'd still believe in outdated scientific hypotheses such as the geocentric model of the solar system (ibid, p. 168). In short, the problem with skeptical theism is that it is unacceptably ad hoc: there is no independent motivation to accept it other than the fact that it will save the God hypothesis from being refuted.

The Rebellion against God
Nick also claims that evil exist because humans disobey God's commandments. He says "It would be one thing to argue that there wouldn’t be such evil/suffering in a world with a God if creatures willingly obeyed him and didn’t exercise their own acts of evil, but it’s a whole different question when that God exists in a reality where his creatures continually rebel against him."
     There is a great deal to say about this sort of argument, but I will just focus on its most obvious flaw: it completely ignores the problem of animal suffering. Virtually all of the victims of suffering now and in the past have been animals. Animals, lacking human level rationality and "free will" have never rebelled against God. Yet, they have suffered and continue to suffer more than humans. How can a perfectly good God allow this to happen? 

God has No Obligations 
Still another objection that Nick puts forth is that God has no moral obligation to prevent John Wayne Gacy's acts of rape, torture and murder of children. He says "As the ultimate authority on all matters with no external obligations binding on him, God has no obligation to alleviate our suffering or to give us a pleasure filled life." Implicit in this response is acceptance of the divine command theory, which I already demonstrated to be false above. Thus, I would deny Nick's claim that God has no external obligations binding on Him. God does have external obligations on him: they are the stance independent moral facts that put constraints on the behavior of all moral agents. This is not a metaphysically suspect idea, since many of us already accept that there are epistemological and logical constraints about what we should and should not believe from an intellectual perspective. 

Finally, Nick says that, since the version of the argument from evil I have presented is evidential, it must be taken into account along with arguments for God’s existence. But the arguments he presented for God's existence fail, as I explained in the previous round. So pointing this out does not help his case. 

Sources in comments
Nickjken's avatar
Nickjken
Pro
#6
In Sam’s response to my opening statement, he takes both of my arguments for the existence of God and argues that one or more of the premises are false. Below I will address the objections.

In premise one of the Kalam Cosmological Argument I argue that everything that begins to exist has a cause. The main reasons I gave in defense of this are that a.) if things could come into existence from nothing then this begs the question as to why we never see anything come into existence from nothing, b.) we have no positive reason to believe that things can just come into existence without a cause, and c.) our knowledge of cause and effect relationships entails that everything that begins to exist has a cause. In addressing my defenses, it is important to note that Sam’s argument only addressed a and c. In his arguing, he never provided any positive reason to believe something could begin to exist without a cause. 

To address both a and c, Sam pointed out that our experience of things coming into existence with a cause can’t sufficiently demonstrate that everything that begins to exist has a cause since our common experience pertains to rearrangement of pre-existing material, whereas the universe came into existence out of no material. However, there is a key distinction that needs to be made that I believe my opponent is missing out on. That distinction is the difference between a material cause and an efficient cause. When I say that everything that begins to exist has a cause, what I’m really saying is that everything that begins to exist has an efficient cause. A material cause refers to the substance that something is made from. For example, a TV is made from glass and metal and plastic. However, an efficient cause refers to the reason behind somethings comes into existence. For example, a TV exists because someone has the idea to build one and put all the parts together to make it work (Trumpeter). In our common experience, it is true that we consistently find an efficient cause for the effects we see in the world. It seems plausible that if something could come into existence without an efficient cause then we should expect to see that. However, we don’t. Since my argument is referring to efficient causes and not material causes, the fact that our experience primarily includes effects that also have a material cause is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Even though the universe has no material cause, it would still require an efficient cause.

The second premise of the Kalam Cosmological argument states that the universe began to exist. In order to address the defenses of the second premise, Sam argues for a theory of time he describes as eternalism (I’ll refer readers to his argument for a definition). It’s important to note that this argument is the only argument Sam gives that address the philosophical arguments I give that the universe began to exist. Therefore, if eternalism is false and presentism is true, my philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past will stand unchallenged. As a result, I will focus my response to Sam’s arguments against the second premise on defending presentism. When addressing the issue of presentism and eternalism, it is important to ask ourselves what is intuitively more probable and what does our common experience lead us to infer (Craig)? It seems as if we experience the present as being real, the past as no longer existing, and the future as not yet existing. Therefore in the absence of a defeater of this intuition, it seems that it’s more plausible than its negation that presentism is true. If eternalism were true, it seems most likely that we would experience the world in a very different way. If we are to reject presentism, we would need a reason to reject our intuition that tells us that the past already happened and that the present is the only thing that is actually happening. Moreover, if eternalism were true, cause and effect relationships would not exist as they do. In time cause and effect relationships require that the cause exists before the effect can follow. Under eternalism, all events are simultaneously real and thus we couldn't have effects that come about as a result of a cause. For example, if water is to begin to freeze once the temperature hits 32 degrees, under presentism the prior state of the temperature dropping causes the chain of events that leads to the water freezing. However, on eternalism, the temperature drop and the water freezing are equally real and thus one doesn’t directly follow from the other even though theoretically the temperature drop caused the water to freeze. It seems as if eternalism would create this absurdity when it comes to cause and effect relationships.

In addressing my argument from contingency, Sam argues that my first premise commits the fallacy of composition, which is the only objection given to the argument. Therefore, if I can address this objection adequately my argument will stand unchallenged. In addressing Sam’s objection, there is an important distinction that needs to be made. This distinction refers to the difference between an accidental and an essential attribute of a thing. An accidental attribute of a thing is an attribute that a being happens to possess but is not an essential component of the thing (Huffling). For example, if a brick was painted red, the attribute of being red would be an accidental attribute since it’s not required for a brick to be red. An essential attribute is an attribute that a thing must possess to be considered that thing (Huffling). For example, oxygen is an essential attribute of a water molecule. Something can’t be considered “water” if it doesn’t have oxygen. This is important to distinguish these because the fallacy of composition only applies to accidental attributes of a thing. For example, if I saw that a brick on a brick wall was red and then concluded that the whole wall of bricks was red, I would be committing the fallacy of composition. However if I went to the ocean and concluded that because a water molecule contained oxygen that therefore the whole ocean possessed the attribute of having oxygen, I would not be committing the fallacy of composition. In the case of the universe, contingency is an essential attribute and not an accidental attribute (see my opening statement for arguing that contingency is essential to the nature of everything in the universe) of everything in the universe. Therefore, we can conclude that by virtue of everything in the universe being contingent, the universe itself is contingent.

With respect to Sam’s final comments, it’s important to note that these arguments are designed to be part of a cumulative case for God’s existence and as individuals make it more likely than not that God exists. Arguing that they don’t each individually address every attribute of God doesn’t negate the power they have in showing God exists. If these arguments succeed, which I believe they do, they make it astronomically more likely than not that God exists. With reference to the moral perfection of God, I would refer readers to my rebuttal of Sam’s opening statement which contains the moral argument. The argument I gave sufficiently defends that the problem of evil Sam presents actually provides evidence God exists and that this is a morally perfect God.

Finally, Sam’s comments about my arguments only defending deism and not theism demonstrate a misunderstanding from my opponent. Deism is a form of theism that believes God exists but no longer intervenes in the world. Even if the arguments showed deism (which they don’t limit one to that position) the arguments would still be defending theism.

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