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Best Argument For or Against God's Existence

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AllanV

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Is that not what you are doing here in this forum?

Anything that could not be the product of your own imagination? A cure for cancer, perhaps? A unified theory of gravity? No?

The Bible was written and edited that men trying to sell religion. Do not cite it as evidence, particularly for its own claims.

How do you know this?

I do not know what you mean by "God".

Are you just making this up as you go along?

How do you know this?

Do you have any science to substantiate this?

I have no idea of what you are going on about. How is this an argument for (or against?) God's existence?

A few years ago a radio report said science could now prove that people enjoyed eating ice-cream.
There are some more like that but I can't remember them at the moment.
 
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Davian

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What they believe about other issues is really irrelevant to the topic at hand.
It is completely relevant. If you are personally discrediting the very individuals you are citing as supporting your KCA, should not everyone in this forum be aware of it?
 
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Davian

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A few years ago a radio report said science could now prove that people enjoyed eating ice-cream.
There are some more like that but I can't remember them at the moment.
Ice cream. Now there is an argument for God.

Not really, but I do wonder why no one tries leading with that. :)
 
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Davian

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It is naïve to think that all truth can be known only through math or science. The KCA is a philosophical argument and we will have to deal with it on those terms.

BTW, I just happened across this little gem:


It's a youtube video of Alexander Vilenkin giving a presentation. Here's the description:
"Physicist and cosmologist Dr. Alexander Vilenkin refutes some scientific models (like Eternal Inflation, Cyclic Evolution, and Static Seed (Emergent Universe)) that supposedly argue for a universe without a beginning. He then offers his own explanation (via the Borde Guth Vilenkin Theorem) why the universe did have a beginning."

Spolier alert!! Not only does he show that Carroll's model did have a beginning, but he concluded the talk with the following statement in his powerpoint:
"Did the universe have a beginning? Probably yes."
He would be speculating. You are building your argument on speculation.
 
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Davian

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Joshua260 said:
1. The philosophical arguments against infinite regress.


There are a few arguments that show that even though actual infinites can be used in math, they make no sense when applied to reality.

A simple point is that actual infinities are sets of numbers to which no increment can be added since, by their nature of infiniteness, the set includes all numbers...so there is nothing to add! The fact that we will have tomorrow and thus add a day to the set of days that have already existed demonstrates that the number of days is not an actual infinity. Therefore, time had a beginning.
Now all you have to do is demonstrate that this philosophical argument can be applied to that period of "time" prior to the current expansion of the cosmos.
 
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Davian

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Then why are you using scientific theories and discoveries to back it up?
Scientific theories that he gives no credence to, other than to shore up the flimsy premises of his KCA.
 
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TillICollapse

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Joshua -- I may regret jumping back in here, but you repeatedly reference Hawking, and seemingly out of context. For example:

I'm a "scientific thinker" also. I took several physics courses (up to and including General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics) and read numerous books on the subject. But I don't think that proves anything anyway. There are also numerous scientists who believe that the universe had a definite beginning, most notably Stephen Hawking. He developed a theory that avoided a singularity by inserting what he called "imaginary time". He explained that doing this allowed him to perform certain complicated calculations. But he admits that Imaginary time is just that...imaginary. It's just a mathematical contrivance.

"Only if we could picture the universe in terms of imaginary time would there be no singularities...When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities." Hawking in Brief History of Time page 138-139.

Here is an article of Hawking's you previously picked from, where I'll quote from to show a fuller context:

"It seems that Quantum theory, on the other hand, can predict how the universe will begin. Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there's another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real, as what we call real time.

The three directions in space, and the one direction of imaginary time, make up what is called a Euclidean space-time. I don't think anyone can picture a four dimensional curve space. But it is not too difficult to visualise a two dimensional surface, like a saddle, or the surface of a football
."

That doesn't sound like Hawking is claiming imaginary time is nothing more than an imaginative contrivance. If you want to claim something like this is just imagination and philosophy and involves no mathematics, I'd like to see you flesh that out and explain how you come to that conclusion.

Also, if you further read that article, you'll see that Hawking DOES state the singularity exists ... in "real" time. The time we experience now. It doesn't exist in imaginary time, in imaginary time it's just a point from which the universe expands smoothly.

"The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn't have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again."

If I understand at least the basics correctly, he is stating that there *is* a singularity from which time and the universe (I believe he is basically meaning the observable universe, considering the way he describes it throughout the lecture) came forth from, but when attempting to explain the origins of the entire universe from the context of the Hartle-Hawking state ... that point appears like any other point in time along the imaginary time axis. IOW ... it didn't ALL originate with the singularity, as previously thought. "What came before the singularity ?" is what the Hartle-Hawking state attempts to address. So he is describing two periods of "existence" ... the beginning the universe where things like "beginning of time" apply, and then BEFORE that (before the Planck Epoch), when things like that don't apply and break down (at the singularity) and may become meaningless. I believe when you reference him, you are picking things out of context, and mixing and mashing ideas. I haven't read ABHOT in a long while, however simply referencing that lecture and other online articles, it seems to me you are taking him out of context.

I've already gone through some of these circles with you weeks ago in this thread, so it's not totally fair of me to post and run, but I'm not interested in going round with you again. However if you'd like to address, in detail and with equations that you understand AND can explain, why the very concepts you are referencing are nothing more than imaginative contrivances ... feel free. Seeing as how you pick from those same proposals and concepts to try and support your own statements, which I think you do out of context.

The reason I cannot agree that there is a possibility that God does not exist is because I have the witness of the Holy Spirit. I know that means nothing to you. That's a different subject though, and I'd rather stay on the KCA in this thread.
Then why not just stick with referencing the Holy Spirit ... why go through all of this with the KCA and whatnot ?
 
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Archaeopteryx

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You and the others seem to be confused on this issue. Let's revisit the basic KCA.

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause for it's existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for it's existence.
As soon as you revisit the objections you have yet to address.

Nowhere does the basic KCA say or imply that God did not "begin to exist", so the argument is not begging the question as some assert.
If God is the only entity in the category of entities Not Beginning to Exist, then it does beg the question.

To refresh our memories, you asked me why doesn't God belong in the group of "everything that begins to exist" and I was answering you from what the bible says about God and not the KCA! The bible describes God as a being who never "began to exist".
And? We should care about what the Bible has to say on the matter because?

So now back to the KCA: If the conclusion is true, then we can extrapolate some characteristic traits of the cause of the universe.
We have already covered this territory.

Since p2 says that the space-time universe began to exist, then time itself began to exist. Since it is incoherent that something inside the universe could have created the universe itself, then it stands to reason that the cause of the universe was not part of the universe. Therefore, there is a state of affairs in which the cause existed a-temporally. In other words, there is no time in which the cause of the universe did not exist. Therefore, the cause of the universe never "began to exist".
If the beginning of the universe is also the beginning of time, then we could say the same of the universe: there was no time in which the universe did not exist; it has always existed.

Notice that I didn't say "God", but rather said, "the cause of the universe". But it so happens that this characteristic trait of the cause of the universe matches one of the characteristic traits of the Abrahamic God.
"It just so happens." ^_^ You don't need to feign surprise when your argument was engineered to reach this very conclusion.
 
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Davian

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The reason I cannot agree that there is a possibility that God does not exist is because I have the witness of the Holy Spirit. I know that means nothing to you.
It means a lot. It means that you consider yourself infallible, and that this discussion is one sided; there is no possibility of you being wrong, or of those that disagree with you being right.
 
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nonbeliever314

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Oh KCA, what have I done? We should stay on topic.....

But I seriously don't know where else we can go with this argument. I think we've tried everything. Last off topic thing, I promise... What if we make a time machine, go back 2500 years, and remove the KCA from history?
 
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TillICollapse

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But I seriously don't know where else we can go with this argument. I think we've tried everything. Last off topic thing, I promise... What if we make a time machine, go back 2500 years, and remove the KCA from history?
Sometimes, semantics aside, I believe it applies: "You cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into."

Concerning time machines ... absolutely one of my all time favorite movies, by the awesome George Pal :)

time_machine_04.jpg


[/derail]
 
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