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A huge problem is that you are wading into a discussion that has a lot of back and forth. It's not the same as a Holocaust denier that is talking only to Holocaust deniers. Loke is formulating a response, referencing well-known models and terms, to atheistic philosophers of religion (there are many, such as Linford who is referenced throughout Loke's argument.) Unlike the disdain that people who argue with Holocaust deniers might express, atheistic philosophers of religion find the whole topic of great enough importance to devote a lifetime to, and support the position that "it is possible to rationally believe in God."
The Ekyroptic universe is a physics theory you might have heard popularized as "The Big Bounce." It was proposed by some pretty important theoretical physicists, Burt Ovrut, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok. Using the accurate scientific term to refer to a theory is not a knock against the argument.
The cosmological argument is explicitly not a God of the Gaps argument. It is not pointing out a gap in scientific knowledge. It is not:
The above would be a God of the Gaps argument. Instead, the Cosmological argument is a logical argument based on the same metaphysical assumptions required to conduct scientific inquiry in the first place.
Edit: I don't really want to argue for the First Cause here. I realize I end up presenting a lot of arguments for the first cause in order to support my point, but I am not going to "make my point legibly" because my point is not that God exists.
The point that I am arguing for is that your arguments are incredibly outdated, and were wrong even back when you formed them. But despite this, you are completely, irrationally, confident in your belief that the cosmological argues for something it does not.
It would be like if I said, "I closed the tab once your scientist started talking about evolution. Don't you know that was debunked a century ago?" and then I link to an old web page that asks where the missing link is. Then I say, "If your scientist believes in evolution as the origin of living species, explain how non-living viruses can cross between species?"
It's fine to not follow this debate in detail, everyone has their own bandwith. But you never understood what theists ever meant by the cosmological argument. That is my point I am trying to make legibly.
Metaphysics is incoherent to anyone who isn't totally immersed in it. It takes the worst aspects of formal philosophy, mainly the mountain of jargon and the lack of applicability to the real world, and dials it up to 11. I have enough problems with normal ivory tower philosophy already, and metaphysics is where the ivory tower ends and philosophers build castles in the sky.
Implying it's not possible to debate the veracity of religion without diving into metaphysics is like saying it's not possible to debate the reality of the Holocaust without discussing the intricacies of chemical compounds on the walls of Auschwitz gas chambers. "There's lots of back and forth on these points, and your arguments are incredibly outdated if you don't discuss these particular chemical compounds". Nah, I'm almost certain there's nonsense somewhere if you're using it to prove this, but I'm not willing to devote dozens of hours to identifying where it is.
The point of the Holocaust example isn't whether disdain is involved or not, but rather that they're leveraging information asymmetry to "prove" their point via jargon dumping, effectively setting up a no-win scenario for people who aren't utterly immersed in the niche topic. If they bite, they'll get demolished. If they don't bite, the denier can smugly claim victory by default. The only winning move is to not play that game, but rather to zoom out and focus on the bigger picture where information asymmetry is less severe.
You're right, I really don't want to discuss metaphysics. I'm perfectly fine debating the veracity of religion in non-metaphysical ways, but if metaphysics is the only thing you want to discuss then there's not much to be gained from either side by continuing this.
I don't want to discuss metaphysics, you are the one who started this conversation. You are the one who made the bold claim that the Cosmological Argument was debunked decades ago and then linked to a source that clearly doesn't understand what the word 'cause' even is. It's not a hard word to understand!
Then after I demonstrated that I knew more on the topic than you, you still linked to the Wikipedia article on God of the Gaps, like I wouldn't have ever encountered that phrase before. You keep setting yourself up as an expert, but when I get in the weeds with you, you back out. Stop setting yourself up as an expert in the Cosmological Argument.
All I was doing before you started this topic was demonstrating that Bishop Robert Barron was a public intellectual given the criteria provided.
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