Third Rebuttal - Mitch Hodge

Gauging from your responses, it seems that you are more eager to brush my objections under the rug and forget about than to address them. Many of your responses were again unsatisfactory in that they did not address the pertinent points of my rebuttal and in that you seemingly wish to shift the burden rather than bear the burden for your own argument. I will address how it is that you have done just this herein.

1) You did not address my claim about the universe being a set of objects. Instead, you tried to make it sound ridiculous. This is hardly a rebuttal. The burden is on you to show that the universe can be coherently understood as one thing. The presumption that you and many others seem to carry on in such debates is that there is one thing, the universe, and it had one beginning. But, what if the universe is nothing more than a collection of parts which all had different origins in time? It is hardly the case with as little we know about the universe that we can knowledgably claim that EVERYTHING began at the same time. Yet, this is precisely what you and Big Bang Theorist want to assume, yet there simply is not the scientific evidence to support this scientific claim. In fact, given the fact that so many parts of the universe are claimed to be of different age, it seems that the evidence points to the contrary. So again, the burden is on you to show that the universe is indeed one thing and that it all began at once.

2) In the initial argument you did give one philosophical argument and one scientific argument. In subsequent rebuttals, however, you have been pushing the scientific aspect of the argument more and more. It is to this I was referring. Yet, here again, you did not address one of the points of my rebuttal which was can an immaterial being, such as God, really be proven or refuted by empirical evidence. This you have yet to address.

3) When you say that I have the burden to show why it is that other cosmological models are preferable to the Big Bang, you are confusing my point and trying to illegitimately shift the burden. First, my rebuttal stated that if the Big Bang was true, then the competing models must be false. I then stated that you have really given no evidence for the truth of the Big Bang model other than an appeal to authority and a consensus theory of truth. Further, I pointed out that it is not the case that the competing theories have been proven false (which they should be if the Big Bang is true). You respond by asking my why the other models should be preferred over the Big Bang. I maintain that the truth of the matter is that what is preferred is irrelevant to the task of truth. What I was looking for was some evidence provided on your part that the Big Bang is true, and not merely believed to be true. This evidence you have not provided. What you did provide was a couple of problems encountered by those who hold the competing theories, yet you failed to mention that these are not crippling problems, and that the Big Bang suffers from rather insurmountable problems itself (such as what happened in the moments preceding the bang itself, and how such a phenomenon is even possible). Again, asserting that most astronomers believe that the Big Bang is true is no more substantial evidence of its truth than saying that most Christians believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. As to the deficiency in matter to allow for the cyclicality of the universe, Hawking addresses this point himself in discussing dark matter. Though there is still a question as to whether there is enough matter, it is certainly the case that there is far more matter than what was previously postulated. In fact, it was in part this discovery which gave rise to the Bang/Crunch theory in the first place. With this being the case, I find your rebuttal here misleading.

4) Whereas I claimed that the universe was observed by Hubble, you state that astronomers do not know where the center is. So, what you are stating is that these astronomers are assuming that there is a center. Further, you claim, correctly, that red shift shows that everything is moving away from us. Would this not mean that we are the center of the universe if everything is moving away from us? Yet scientist have long since confirmed that we are not and cannot be the center of the universe. The problem here seems to be that the scientist are looking for, and assuming that there is such a thing as the center of the universe, but there simply is no conclusive evidence that there is one, and in fact, there is observational evidence to the contrary.

5) Your response to the fallacy of equivocation on the use of causes was simply negligent. You did nothing to answer my indictment. What you did was ignore it by reasserting what I had challenged in the first place.

6) I think your answer the the question of God's immutability is severely lacking. In the same way that theist state that God is omnibenevolent in that He will Good, and He acts morally perfect, they answer the Euthryphro dilemma by stating that God is Good, therefore is not the case that God can be separated from His will, that God is His will, that God IS (as a state of being) Good. I am using the same line of thought here which too is promoted by the theist. It is not the case that the action of creating is a property, but rather the property of being a creator. In that God does not have parts, being a creator must be part of His essence and not an attribute. If the universe is His creation, then He IS the creator of the universe. If the universe is not eternal, then it must be the case that God has not always been the Creator of the universe. If God has not always been the creator of the universe, then he changed at some point and became the creator of the universe. It seems that you are trying to sidetrack this conversation rather than address it. I am not talking about the action of creating, but actually BEING a creator. If God created the universe, then the burden is on you to show how this did not change him, and this you have not done.

The fact of the matter is that if it is the case that theism explains the facts better, then you have not demonstrated it. In fact, little of your arguments have actually dealt with theism but with science. As I pointed out earlier, the burden on you is to demonstrate how empirical evidence can be evidence for an immaterial being. Further, you have failed to address, or worse ignored, some very pertinent objections which I have raised in the face of your argument. It is incumbent upon you to provide actual evidence of the truth of the Big Bang, and then to demonstrate how it is possible that this empirical explanation is in need of an immaterial one. Further, there is nothing which I have stated which you can fairly contrast with the explanation of theism. So far the discussion has not gotten past scientific theories, and these are not comparable to theism in the way you seem to suggest. Perhaps you are equivocating science with atheism. If so, then this would be a mistake. Historically, you will find that the most outspoken atheists have been most critical of science. So, if you were thinking of such a contrast, then it is a false one. But, other than that, I have seen nothing displayed here so far which would allow you to claim that theism has the better explanation. In fact, at this point, I would say that defense is lacking, and the alternative approach has yet to be offered.