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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 "There's lots of back and forth on these points, and your arguments are incredibly outdated if you don't discuss these particular chemical compounds".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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