An Open Question

[Quantum Obscurity]

If you mean to say God is a substance than I would disagree. God can be conceived of as simply the basic foundational existence of reality. God isn't any 'thing' but rather the foundation of everything. This is not pantheism but panentheism.

I'm not suggesting God is a "Substance" I am suggesting that if he is an immaterial being, he has no way to interact with, and therefore influence any material events. The main point here is that, I do not believe in immaterial existence, I am materialist, not substance dualist. Please research substance dualism to understand what I'm getting it, it is the heaviest argument for the existence of a "Soul"

True, but that doesn't mean that every teenager who loses faith never was a Christian to begin with. Not to sound big headed, but if I was never a Christian in my teenage years then no teenager is a Christian.

And I don't understand what you are saying here? I know several devout Christian teenagers who believe in the whole "no premarital sex, the earth is 6000 years old" business. Are you saying that, because they are teenagers, they are not Christians? Thats what what you say reads as.

 

[Quantum Obscurity]

I understood that something or someone had to make the first humans. Thats all im saying. The Genesis account gave names and labels to those things I knew to exist intuitively. When I say intuitively, im speaking of all the powers of reasoning when combined together, that form a picture or understanding of reality.

I hope this clears things up a wee bit.

But does this really mean there has to be an all powerful god?
The strongest christian argument, the Design argument, involving the watch and how it is so complex it has to have been designed. What this suggests is that the most probable result of this is the most likely. The watch was made by someone limited, mortal, and finite. If the design argument holds true, it still does not point to an infinite god, but to a finite creator, who is most likely dead and gone. While I do not believe this to be true, I believe that the most likely explanation for the birth of the universe is circle theory, if the design argument were to be accepted it would more likely point to some giant man tinkering away at his project of the universe, which to us is everything, but to him may be nothing more than another watch to be sold.

(Everything I suggest here is open to interpretation, I'm not actually suggesting that the universe is just a giant watch, it could be any of a million things.)

 

[Elioenai26]

The problem I have with this is that, everything material ages. Time goes on. Nothing lasts for ever, not even the strongest materials we know of, eg. Diamond will last forever; thus everything has an end, and most therefore a beggining, because to suggest that an ending exists, one must have also started in order to reach that end.
The only way anything could be eternal is if something immaterial were to exist, which is a common suggestion of Substance Dualism. The problem with this theory is that if God were real, and were eternal, it must be immaterial. The laws of logic and science dictate that for anything to interact it must share similar properties. When a billiard ball strikes another, it transfers kenetic energy, because both balls have a mass, velocity (0 if stationary, but still a velocity) and other physical properties. If God were real and therefore immaterial, he would not be able to create or influence anything within the material world. The bible teaches that God is omnipotent, so would be able to interact with the world. The only ways out of this is to suggest one of 3 things. 1. God is material, yet real, and therefore is not eternal, and cannot be omnipotent. 2. God is real, yet immaterial, and therefore not omnipotent as he cannot influence anything in the universe that is material. 3.God is not real, because the concept of omnipotence and omniscience defy anything logical.

These is the primary reason I lost my faith.

I can understand your train of thought. Really I can. Your second suggestion is faulty though, and I shall explain why.

The Bible teaches us that God is not only eternal, but He is immaterial, nontemporal, and nonspatial. He is absoulute Spirit, and as such He has no body which can decay like ours, and he is not extended in space.

This is why believers were forbidden to make any physical image of God. (Ex. 20:4). Many biblical texts affirm that God is immaterial. In addition to these verses, there are verses that indicate He is beyond the natural world; the fact that He created the material universe implies He is not material.

The above is actually a refutation of your second suggestion. For in it you say that if God is immaterial, then He therefore cannot act in the material world. This is incorrect based on your understanding of immateriality and its potentiality in the material world. I will explain in detail as best I can below:

You state that since matter and immaterial are opposites, they cannot relate to one another. You maintain that if Mind (God) made matter and is the opposite of matter, then the two could never relate. In other words, God could not act meaningfully in the material world. The assumption of this view seems to be that mind and matter cannot relate because they are opposites that have nothing in common. However, the material and the immaterial do have something in common - they both exist; they both have being. The fact that the immaterial and the material relate should not be a surprise to anyone who believes that they both exist! And as we have shown, above, namely by the very nature of God Himself, that matter is not all that there is. There is a Mind who made it, and there are minds that know it. If we both have mind and matter soul and body, then the material and the immaterial can and do relate. To deny this is self-defeating, since materialism itself is an idea that a mind has about matter. Further, my mind is commanding my body (arms and fingers) to write these words. Anyone who denies this has to use his hand or mouth to express these ideas of his mind - which again is self-defeating!

Therefore when the scripture says: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.(Gen 1:1), and All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.(John 1:3), and For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.(Colossians 1:16-17), and By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.(Hebrews 11:3), we can be confident that these statements are meaningful and correspond to the reality of the universe!

I hope this helps you in your search.

 

[Elioenai26]

The point here is that, if God is A) Omniscient, B) Omnipotent and C) Loves all his creatures
Why did he create pain and suffering for them in the first place? He either A) Doesn't know, therefore is not omniscient, B) Can't do anything about it, therefore not omnipotent or C) Doesn't care enough to do anything about it.
Or there is the simple D) He doesn't exist to do anything about it.

Pain and suffering are not something that is created. They are a result of sin. Sin is a privation or lack in a good substance, a distortion of something pure. Evil is an ontological parisite - it exists only in something good, as a corruption of its goodness. Like rot to a tree or rust to a car; both rot and rust corrupt the good substance (tree or car), but neither rot nor rust exists in and of itself.

So to say that God created these things is false. God can only create that which is good because His nature demands this. God does not create, condone, or promote sin.

However, He does allow it to exist by virtue of creating humans with the ability to either choose to love and follow Him, or to hate and reject Him.

In relation to the above, evil is the seeking to fill the deficiency caused by being in darkness with that which is also false..

 

[Elioenai26]

But does this really mean there has to be an all powerful god?

Excellent question!

When looking at the qualifications of a being that could create the universe as we know it, we find that this being must be able to create the universe ex nihilo (out of nothing), therefore, this being must be:

1. Immaterial - because all matter is material
2. Aseitic (uncaused) - because all matter owes its existence to a cause greater than itself and is contingent.
3. Transcendant - because all matter, space, and time had to have been created by a being outside of space and time.
4. Infinite - because all matter is finite

These are just several of the attributes that a being must possess in order to have brought about the universe as we know it.

The strongest christian argument, the Design argument, involving the watch and how it is so complex it has to have been designed. What this suggests is that the most probable result of this is the most likely.

I would not say it is the strongest argument, but one of several stong arguments for the existence of God.

The watch was made by someone limited, mortal, and finite. If the design argument holds true, it still does not point to an infinite god, but to a finite creator, who is most likely dead and gone.

All the design argument states is that it is more plausible that the universe was created by an intelligent mind as opposed to random naturalistic theories of explanation. A watch is not randomly constructed by chance. The universe is far more intricate than a watch. Therefore it is more plausible to believe that like a watch, the universe was created by an intelligent mind possessing at least the above mentioned attributes.

if the design argument were to be accepted it would more likely point to some giant man tinkering away at his project of the universe, which to us is everything, but to him may be nothing more than another watch to be sold.

In this, you are misunderstanding the argument. A giant man is neither incorporeal, infinite, transcendant, immaterial, or aseitic. He is just a giant man. This is not what the design argument states. The design argument states that it is more plausible that an all knowing intelligent mind created the universe. This being is outside of, greater than and not confined to, space and time.

 

[ranunculus]

You state that everything needs a beginning. This is incorrect. Logicians maintain that everything that begins to exist must have a cause. God never began to exist but has always existed, therefore He needs no cause.

First of, I don't necessarily believe everything needs a cause. I only wanted to point to the problem of infinite regress in the classical cosmological argument. Which you tried to do away with by rephrasing your argument from "Everything that exists has a cause" to "Everything that begins to exist...". 'Kalaming it up' as it were. By doing so you are creating a special pleading loophole to stick your god into.

Assuming you're saying that the only thing that never began to exist is your god, basically that means you're left with the premise "everything except god has a cause".
Or do you believe there are others things that did not begin to exist apart from your god?

 

[Elioenai26]

First of, I don't necessarily believe everything needs a cause. I only wanted to point to the problem of infinite regress in the classical cosmological argument. Which you tried to do away with by rephrasing your argument from "Everything that exists has a cause" to "Everything that begins to exist...". 'Kalaming it up' as it were. By doing so you are creating a special pleading loophole to stick your god into.

Assuming you're saying that the only thing that never began to exist is your god, basically that means you're left with the premise "everything except god has a cause".
Or do you believe there are others things that did not begin to exist apart from your god?

You misunderstand the logical premise that: "everything that begins to exist must have a cause" as something that Christians made up. This is simply not the case. This is a premise taken from the logical argument of Causality and it exists despite what a Christian or any other religious adherent thinks. This argument simply states that every single effect first had a cause that can be traced to a previous effect from another cause, and so on.

What we maintain as Christians is that God is not an effect at all. He was not caused by anything or any being. Anselm put it nicely when He said that: "God is the being greater than that which can be conceived", or in layman's terms: the greatest conceivable being. It simply means that as far as your mind can go back and back and back, to the idea of origins, it must terminate with the concept of God. No thing created God, for it would have had to have been God to be able to do so. And God cannot create God.

 

[ranunculus]

You misunderstand the logical premise that: "everything that begins to exist must have a cause" as something that Christians made up. This is simply not the case. This is a premise taken from the logical argument of Causality and it exists despite what a Christian or any other religious adherent thinks. This argument simply states that every single effect first had a cause that can be traced to a previous effect from another cause, and so on.

What we maintain as Christians is that God is not an effect at all. He was not caused by anything or any being. Anselm put it nicely when He said that: "God is the being greater than that which can be conceived", or in layman's terms: the greatest conceivable being. It simply means that as far as your mind can go back and back and back, to the idea of origins, it must terminate with the concept of God. No thing created God, for it would have had to have been God to be able to do so. And God cannot create God.

Apart from your god, is there anything that didn't begin to exist?

 

[Paradoxum]

I'm not suggesting God is a "Substance" I am suggesting that if he is an immaterial being, he has no way to interact with, and therefore influence any material events.

I don't think you have make a strong argument to prove that. I presented a number of problems and questions which you didn't address.

>What does it mean to interact? Your understanding of it seems to assume that God is an outside force acting on a separate substance. I think many Christians would hold that God is as separate from creation as this assumes.

>If the universe is part of God/ inside God then the problem goes away.

The main point here is that, I do not believe in immaterial existence, I am materialist, not substance dualist. Please research substance dualism to understand what I'm getting it, it is the heaviest argument for the existence of a "Soul"

Don't worry, I know what dualism is, I just finished my second year of my philosophy degree.

Dualism, by Descartes for example, does have the 'soul' as immaterial but this immaterial thing is a 'substance' whose essence is that it is a 'thinking thing'. The word 'immaterial' in relation to Descartes' mind/body dualism generally means something different from the word applied to God. For Descartes the mind is a separate type of thing from the material, but when we say God is immaterial we don't necessarily mean that He is the same sort of thing as a soul.

And I don't understand what you are saying here? I know several devout Christian teenagers who believe in the whole "no premarital sex, the earth is 6000 years old" business. Are you saying that, because they are teenagers, they are not Christians? Thats what what you say reads as.

No, what I was saying was that I was a devote Christian when I was a teenager. I was one of the most devote teenage Christians in my church. If someone wants to try to claim that I wasn't a Christian just because I lost faith then it is only reasonable to think that most teenage Christians aren't real Christians because they don't even make it to my level of love for God.

 

[Elioenai26]

Apart from your god, is there anything that didn't begin to exist?

No. Existence itself as we know it, came from God.

For it is written:

"All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." John 1:3 (Emphasis mine)

 

[ranunculus]

No. Existence itself as we know it, came from God.

Ok, if there are no things apart from god that did not begin to exist, the Kalam cosmological argument

Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
The universe has a beginning of its existence;
->Therefore: The universe has a cause of its existence.

can be rephrased this way:

Everything except god has a cause;
The universe has a beginning of its existence;
->Therefore:The universe has a cause of its existence.

This is special pleading and begging the question.

 

[Elioenai26]

Ok, if there are no things apart from god that did not begin to exist, the Kalam cosmological argument
can be rephrased this way:
This is special pleading and begging the question.

The essence of the Kalam is as follows:

1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2. The universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore, the universe had a Cause.

The first premise is self-evident because to admit otherwise would be to say that nothing produces something.

The second premise is defended both philosophically and scientifically.

Therefore, the conclusion follows logically and soundly and meaningfully from the presmises and cannot be special pleading or begging the question because the Kalam argument no where states that the Cause has to be or must be the Judeo-Christian God.

 

[dysert]

The problems I have here, are that the bible DOES have some fairly significant contradictions. 1. It suggests that Satan is the route of all evil, yet god kills millions while Satan, through the entire book, kills a total of 10 people. 2. God spends the entire old testament being cruel and vengeful, yet in the new testament he becomes friendly and forgiving.

No, a contradiction would be if the Bible were to say "A" in one place and "not A" in another place. There are no places where this occurs. To your examples, (1) I don't know of anywhere that "suggests that satan is the route of all evil". And even if it did, a *suggestion* would involve an inference on your part, so it wouldn't rise to the level of a contradiction. (2) God also presents grace and mercy in the OT as well as wrath in the NT. God has multiple facets. Nothing contradictory about that.

Also, while science doesn't explain everything yet, that is because we are a tiny, insiginificant species within a nigh on infinite universe, and we can only observe 0.3% of the known universe, and beyond that it could be bigger than we even know! We cannot possibly expect to know everything, but we don't need to turn to supernatural theories just because we don't know everything yet.

Well if we're the *only* species in the universe, that makes us pretty significant, don't you think? And no, we don't *need* to turn to the supernatural to explain what we don't know. I was just answering your question about why *I* believe in God.

 

[dysert]

So, you haven't read the bible...

Stick around, Eddy, and you'll eventually come to discover how ridiculous that statement is.

 

[ranunculus]

The essence of the Kalam is as follows:

1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2. The universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore, the universe had a Cause.

The first premise is self-evident because to admit otherwise would be to say that nothing produces something.

No, "Everything that had a beginning had a cause" can be replaced with "Everything except god has a cause", if you agree that there are no things that are un-caused apart from god (which you did).
Therefor god is put into the definition of the premise of the argument that is supposed to prove god's existence, hence it's question begging.

The second premise is defended both philosophically and scientifically.

No, the current state of the universe had a beginning (the big bang). No one knows what happened before and it does not mean the universe had a beginning. Seeing as you have no problem with some things not being created (god), I'm puzzled as to why you would have a problem with an uncreated universe.

Therefore, the conclusion follows logically and soundly and meaningfully from the presmises and cannot be special pleading or begging the question because the Kalam argument no where states that the Cause has to be or must be the Judeo-Christian God.

Again I find both premises unsupported and I fail to see how this logical syllogism would convince anyone except someone who already believes.
You're right about one thing though, even if this argument were valid and sound, you'd only get as far as deism. And even then it's still a long way to theism and christianity.

 

[dysert]

God is the metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought

I'm guessing that's supposed to impugn the intellect of believers, but I won't bite on that.

1 John 1:1
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life

Matt. 27:35
Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: "They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots."

Can a metaphor be seen with our eyes, be handled with our hands, be crucified, wear clothes? You're spiritualizing away the God of the Bible.

 

[toLiJC]

Hi quantum obscurity

the important question is not (so) what makes us believe God exists, but (more) what can we do for solving the problems of the human being(-s), because e.g. some people having follow(-ed) the all-encompassing love of God, they always work for complete salvation and eternal life to all people/souls, believing that there is all-merciful God that is almighty for every good work especially if there is who to ask the good things from Him, else God forbid we might only observe the premature waste of people and death caused on the part of the hasty clerics/worshippers of the religion of the beast(666), simply no time to waste, the rivalry and stinginess in the faith are notably loss of time, there is a need of righteous kindness as meaning active help(-ing)/support

Blessings

 

[dysert]

True, but that doesn't mean that every teenager who loses faith never was a Christian to begin with.

Nor did I say that. I merely stated the fact that growing up in a Christian family doesn't make one a Christian.

 

[Paradoxum]

Nor did I say that. I merely stated the fact that growing up in a Christian family doesn't make one a Christian.

I know, I'm just sayin too

 

[Elioenai26]

No, "Everything that had a beginning had a cause" can be replaced with "Everything except god has a cause", if you agree that there are no things that are un-caused apart from god (which you did).
Therefor god is put into the definition of the premise of the argument that is supposed to prove god's existence, hence it's question begging.

Why put something in it that the argument does not demand? If that is the case, then any syllogism can be made to be question begging. You replacing words with words to make the argument something that it isnt is something that you do to suit your view. So actually you are found to be in error when doing so. The Kalam argument stands or falls based on its own premises, not on what you or anyone else want to put into it!

No, the current state of the universe had a beginning (the big bang). No one knows what happened before and it does not mean the universe had a beginning. Seeing as you have no problem with some things not being created (god), I'm puzzled as to why you would have a problem with an uncreated universe.

At the big bang, all matter that comprises the universe including space and time was released in an enormous explosion. Before this explosion, all matter space and time existed as a singularity (says some scientists), but since this singularity is composed of matter, then it is necessarily not uncreated, but created. The idea of an eternal, material, uncreated singularity is self contradictory. This is not even to mention the fact that immaterial entities such as minds cannot come from that which is material!