Best Argument For or Against God's Existence

[Archaeopteryx]

No. There is a state of affairs in which God exist timelessly without creation (space-time). The state of affairs at t0 is when God began to exist temporally with his creation.

So there is some state of affairs before time begins?

 

[TillICollapse]

No. There is a state of affairs in which God exist timelessly without creation (space-time). The state of affairs at t0 is when God began to exist temporally with his creation.

Give us a picture of the state of affairs, according to you, before t=0. What was there, what wasn't, how things came into being, etc.

 

[TillICollapse]

Joshua:

Let me ask you a couple of questions, from a different angle:

Do you believe that our current causality remains unviolated ?

Now consider the causal chain as you know it. Where do we as people fit into that chain ? More specifically, where do *you* fit into that chain ?

Finally ... do you believe there is ever a point at which it is unreasonable for a person who is capable of pondering the origin of all things, to ask, "Okay, but where did THAT come from ?"

 

[Joshua260]

No, faith is just the opposite of that. If you have good reason to believe something is true, you don't need faith.

Christians define faith as trusting in something you have good reason to believe is true.

So going back to how Christians define faith, we believe faith is putting your trust in something that you have good reason to believe is true. For example, if I decide to take a plane trip on a reputable airline with an experienced pilot, I would decide to put my faith in him (trust him) to get me to my destination safely. However, how could I possibly know that he was depressed and planning to fly me into the side of a mountain?

Then why gesture toward our experience as support for the first premise? Define your terms so that the meaning of the premise is clear and then examine whether it is supported. For our experience to serve as support for the first premise you necessarily have to restrict your usage of the terms 'cause' and 'begins to exist' to that which is indicated by our experience. If these terms refer to something that is outside our experience, then our experience cannot serve as support for the first premise.

I've already defined it. Our experience is that effects have causes. The problem is that you are making the mistaken assumption that cause and effect cannot happen concurrently.

Don't know what this has to do with anything; this seems to be more relevant to your conversation with Ana. In any case, Martymer 81 (YouTube) has something interesting to say about this from a physics perspective. The basic point is this: "Forces don't propagate instantaneously."

The point is that the same time that energy leaves one ball it impacted, the other ball receives it. Causes and effects can happen concurrently.

Is it any more incoherent than a disembodied, immaterial, spaceless, and timeless consciousness?

Yes, an immaterial spaghetti monster is incoherent. The cause of the universe may be hard to understand, but that is different from being incoherent. It doesn't make sense that a material being (the FSM) could have created everything material (including itself).

What evidence? All you've done is speculate. I've shown you that I can speculate as well. If our speculations are ever going to be more than just speculations, however, we need evidence, which is obtained by investigation.

I don't see what's wrong with speculating. Scientist do it all the time...and they also use speculation to rule out possibilities that do not fit within the parameters. There's absolutely nothing wrong with speculating about the characteristics traits of the first cause.

You haven't shown that your preferred entity is timeless and did not begin to exist. It could just be another cause in a longer chain. On that point, you haven't even shown that your preferred entity is uncaused.

I'm not presupposing a preferred entitiy, but simply following the logic. The various arguments against infinite regress suggests that time had a definite beginning and the red-shift, background radiation, 2nd law of thermodynamics all imply that the universe began to exist. Since everything that begins to exist has a cause, then that means that the cause of the universe would have to be timeless and uncaused. Since there was a state of affairs in which the cause must have existed without space-time, then it was a necessary being.

Not in my experience. Craig, for example, calls it a "conceptual analysis". He doesn't say, "I speculate that..." He says, "A conceptual analysis reveals..."

good grief. By analysis, he means he's speculating. This objection of your does nothing. I admit to speculating and I've never heard an apologist who implied otherwise.

That's your understanding of how a flame works within the universe. Physical principles that describe how flames naturally form within the universe don't apply to the Divine Flame, which is beyond the universe. It's supernatural, and therefore doesn't need to satisfy the conditions for naturally forming flames (e.g., a source of fuel).

So this is a flame with no fuel, oxygen, and source of ignition? Calling it a flame then might be a misnomer. Let me ask you this: Does it exist timelessly without the universe, uncaused, immaterial, and extremely powerful? If so, it may be that we are talking about the same kind of thing but calling it different names.

But if you think this objection to the Divine Flame has merit, then I can make the same objection to your personal creator God: my understanding of intelligence is that it has its roots in biology, that it is the product of living brains and therefore subject to their metabolic requirements, and that the components necessary to form intelligent life are all within our spacetime universe.

You're getting into a different discussion here, and I'd like to stay on the KCA in this thread.

You can't dismiss the Divine Flame as incoherent on the basis of principles operant in the universe while also upholding your favoured theological proposal in spite of them.

I didn't say your internal flame was incoherent, but it would be if you claimed it as a material being (because of creating itself).

I wasn't even talking about causes and effects occurring concurrently. You seem to be confusing my posts for someone else's. I was talking about the shift in the meaning of 'cause' in the argument.

I don't see where it does that.

If you want to rely on personal experience as support for the first premise, then don't be surprised when people hold you to it.[/QUOTE]OK.


Is Goddidit a theory? Does it advance our understanding of the origins of the universe any further than "I don't know?"[/QUOTE]This is not a god of the gaps argument. It's not about what we don't know...it's about what we can know about the cause of the universe. For example, we can be pretty darn sure that a FSM did not create it.


Please shorten your posts. But if choose not to, please don't be offended if I don't respond to all of your comments.

 

[Joshua260]

So you're agreeing that scientists have studied things in which they couldn't find a cause. From that, how do you draw the conclusion that everything which began to exist has a cause?

I'm saying that this is how we do science.

Once again, that's the fallacious argument of appeal to higher authority.

Showing that the premises are based on science is not an argument from authority.

Show me in your own words why premises #1 and #2 are correctly drawn conclusions without deferring to science.

Seriously? An atheist is actually asking me to demonstrate the truth of a premise without deferring to science? That's a new one on me! Are you using the right atheists handbook?

Then you disagree with the assertion that infinity doesn't actually exist and is just a concept.

You're playing semantic games here, and I don't wish to waste time doing that. God is infinite in a qualitative way. I do not believe in actual infinities (as in the quantitative way).

So what you're saying is if premises #1 and #2 are true, then the conclusion in #3 only tells us that whatever caused the universe is timeless and that there are no other known qualities about it.

I said that we can extrapolate out that the cause would have been timeless, space-less, uncaused, immaterial, extremely powerful, and maybe even personal.

Please explain how you get from limited to being timeless to possessing all those other qualities such as personal, loving, spaceless, etc.

I didn't say loving. The KCA certainly allows for an evil being...but it definitely rules out such things as the flying spaghetti monster, all of the Greek and Roman gods, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the like.

And what other things in the category of "not beginning to exist" have you considered other than your god and why have you ruled them out?

I can think of only one other thing that would fall into the category of "not beginning to exist and that would be thing like numbers, sets, and so forth. However, those types of things are not causal beings so that rules them out.

Btw, please shorten your posts. If you choose not to, please don't be offended if I stop responding to all of your comments.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Christians define faith as trusting in something you have good reason to believe is true.

So going back to how Christians define faith, we believe faith is putting your trust in something that you have good reason to believe is true. For example, if I decide to take a plane trip on a reputable airline with an experienced pilot, I would decide to put my faith in him (trust him) to get me to my destination safely. However, how could I possibly know that he was depressed and planning to fly me into the side of a mountain?

You are equivocating on the word 'faith'. 'Faith' sometimes refers to confidence, which may or may not be warranted. 'Faith', in the religious sense, is not just confidence or trust.

I've already defined it. Our experience is that effects have causes.

If you want to rely on the understanding of causality derived from our experience, then bear in mind that this has implications for the rest of the argument.

The problem is that you are making the mistaken assumption that cause and effect cannot happen concurrently.

I did not even address this issue until the last post. You're confusing my posts for someone else's.

The point is that the same time that energy leaves one ball it impacted, the other ball receives it. Causes and effects can happen concurrently.

To repeat Martymer 81: "Forces don't propagate instantaneously."

Yes, an immaterial spaghetti monster is incoherent. The cause of the universe may be hard to understand, but that is different from being incoherent. It doesn't make sense that a material being (the FSM) could have created everything material (including itself).

But the FSM isn't a material being. I've already made that clear. He is immaterial.

I don't see what's wrong with speculating. Scientist do it all the time...and they also use speculation to rule out possibilities that do not fit within the parameters. There's absolutely nothing wrong with speculating about the characteristics traits of the first cause.

I didn't say there was anything wrong about speculating. There is a point though where speculation must lend itself to investigation if it is to ever become more than just speculation.

I'm not presupposing a preferred entitiy, but simply following the logic.

So am I. That's how I got to the Divine Flame.

The various arguments against infinite regress suggests that time had a definite beginning and the red-shift, background radiation, 2nd law of thermodynamics all imply that the universe began to exist. Since everything that begins to exist has a cause, then that means that the cause of the universe would have to be timeless and uncaused.

Does not follow from the premises. There is no necessity for the cause to itself be uncaused. At best, the argument against infinite regress means that the chain stops somewhere; it doesn't entail that the chain must stop with the cause of the universe.

good grief. By analysis, he means he's speculating. This objection of your does nothing. I admit to speculating and I've never heard an apologist who implied otherwise.

Strange definition of 'analysis'.

So this is a flame with no fuel, oxygen, and source of ignition? Calling it a flame then might be a misnomer.

Yep. No fuel, no oxygen, no source of ignition. It's supernatural, and therefore does not need to satisfy the requirements of naturally forming flames.

Let me ask you this: Does it exist timelessly without the universe, uncaused, immaterial, and extremely powerful? If so, it may be that we are talking about the same kind of thing but calling it different names.

Yes, it is an eternal uncaused flame. But it's neither personal nor intelligent.

You're getting into a different discussion here, and I'd like to stay on the KCA in this thread.

This isn't a different discussion; it's the matter at hand.

I don't see where it does that.

I clarified the point here and here.

This is not a god of the gaps argument.

Not an overt one, no.

It's not about what we don't know...it's about what we can know about the cause of the universe. For example, we can be pretty darn sure that a FSM did not create it.

How? What process of reasoning could lead you to confidently reject the FSM?

 

[Joshua260]

Such a being, if it were conscious, would be trapped with the same thought forever. It could not change. It could not contemplate and select from different design concepts. It has no latitude in which to move from one idea to the next.

Well, I'm not so sure. Some get confused and think that cause and effect is what makes time, but effects can happen concurrently with their causes. I believe that time is better defined as changes from one event to another. Since the cause of the universe would have to be immaterial (and timeless as I said before), I can envision two possibilities: either the cause would have to be an unembodied mind, or things like numbers or sets. However, things like numbers or sets do not have causal properties so that seems to rule them out. So if we're talking about an unembodied mind, and we don't have changes from one event to another, I don't see how the concept of an unembodied mind existing timelessly is a problem.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Well, I'm not so sure. Some get confused and think that cause and effect is what makes time, but effects can happen concurrently with their causes. I believe that time is better defined as changes from one event to another. Since the cause of the universe would have to be immaterial (and timeless as I said before), I can envision two possibilities: either the cause would have to be an unembodied mind, or things like numbers or sets. However, things like numbers or sets do not have causal properties so that seems to rule them out. So if we're talking about an unembodied mind, and we don't have changes from one event to another, I don't see how the concept of an unembodied mind existing timelessly is a problem.

It's a problem for that mind. It's trapped with the same thought forever.

 

[Joshua260]

What do you mean he postulated a science of the gap argument ?

Because although he has somewhat of a theory, he admits that there is absolutely no evidence to support the existence of an "imaginary time". [/QUOTE]

You keep referring to the beginning of time as we know it, and that is where you insert your need for a being. [/QUOTE] I simply proclaim that scientific evidence shows that the universe began to exist, which Hawking agrees with, but he made up this "imaginary time" in order to avoid concluding the existence of a supernatural being...and that's why its a "science of the gaps" argument. No evidence...just a desire for the cause not to be God.

I'm wondering...do you think Stephen Hawking...or even you...would ever consider that the existence of God might actually be a possibility?

 

[Joshua260]

So there is some state of affairs before time begins?

That would be illogical. Rather I believe there is a state of affairs where God exists without creation.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I simply proclaim that scientific evidence shows that the universe began to exist, which Hawking agrees with, but he made up this "imaginary time" in order to avoid concluding the existence of a supernatural being...and that's why its a "science of the gaps" argument. No evidence...just a desire for the cause not to be God.

Hang on... I thought you said that there was nothing wrong with speculation. Now, when someone else speculates, you accuse of them deliberately trying to avoid your preferred theological proposal which, by the way, also suffers from lack of evidence.

I'm wondering...do you think Stephen Hawking...or even you...would ever consider that the existence of God might actually be a possibility?

It's a possibility. But do we have any reason to believe that it is true?

 

[Joshua260]

It's a problem for that mind. It's trapped with the same thought forever.

Isn't "forever" a temporal reference?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

That would be illogical. Rather I believe there is a state of affairs where God exists without creation.

Right, a state of affairs where God exists without creation followed by another state of affairs. Put otherwise, a state of affairs that precedes time.

 

[Joshua260]

Give us a picture of the state of affairs, according to you, before t=0. What was there, what wasn't, how things came into being, etc.

There is no "before" t0. I believe there is a state of affairs where God exists without creation. However, I would say that now that the temporal "genie is out of the bottle" so to speak, I don't see how if God destroyed the universe, he could ever go back to an a-temporal existence.

 

[Joshua260]

Joshua:

Let me ask you a couple of questions, from a different angle:

Do you believe that our current causality remains unviolated ?

Now consider the causal chain as you know it. Where do we as people fit into that chain ? More specifically, where do *you* fit into that chain ?

Effects can occur concurrently with their effects.

Finally ... do you believe there is ever a point at which it is unreasonable for a person who is capable of pondering the origin of all things, to ask, "Okay, but where did THAT come from ?"

Yes. In the situation where time does not exist. I believe that time is better defined as changes from one event to another, not that an affect has to happen after a cause. I think that idea is a mistaken assumption. So in the situation I'm describing, the causal agent (I believe is God) could exist without the effect(the universe).

 

[Joshua260]

You are equivocating on the word 'faith'. 'Faith' sometimes refers to confidence, which may or may not be warranted. 'Faith', in the religious sense, is not just confidence or trust.



If you want to rely on the understanding of causality derived from our experience, then bear in mind that this has implications for the rest of the argument.



I did not even address this issue until the last post. You're confusing my posts for someone else's.


To repeat Martymer 81: "Forces don't propagate instantaneously."



But the FSM isn't a material being. I've already made that clear. He is immaterial.



I didn't say there was anything wrong about speculating. There is a point though where speculation must lend itself to investigation if it is to ever become more than just speculation.



So am I. That's how I got to the Divine Flame.



Does not follow from the premises. There is no necessity for the cause to itself be uncaused. At best, the argument against infinite regress means that the chain stops somewhere; it doesn't entail that the chain must stop with the cause of the universe.



Strange definition of 'analysis'.



Yep. No fuel, no oxygen, no source of ignition. It's supernatural, and therefore does not need to satisfy the requirements of naturally forming flames.



Yes, it is an eternal uncaused flame. But it's neither personal nor intelligent.



This isn't a different discussion; it's the matter at hand.



I clarified the point here and here.



Not an overt one, no.



How? What process of reasoning could lead you to confidently reject the FSM?

Please stop presuming to tell people of faith what "faith" means.

You posted a real long post and I just don't have enough time to answer a multitude of questions. I would be glad to try to answer your questions about Christianity, but in smaller chunks.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Please stop presuming to tell people of faith what "faith" means.

People of faith don't own the definition of the word 'faith'.

You posted a real long post and I just don't have enough time to answer a multitude of questions. I would be glad to try to answer your questions about Christianity, but in smaller chunks.

Given that I was once a Christian myself, I don't think it's necessary for you to answer my questions about Christianity.

 

[Joshua260]

Hang on... I thought you said that there was nothing wrong with speculation. Now, when someone else speculates, you accuse of them deliberately trying to avoid your preferred theological proposal which, by the way, also suffers from lack of evidence.

No, I'm fine with speculating. And Stephen can do that all he wants. Let's pretend that he put that into a separate premise:

p1': There is such a thing as an imaginary time, which removes the necessity for a causal being.

I think that's a fair summation of it. But in this case, I would ask Stephen to present his evidence for p1', in which he would have to decline and I would not thus be swayed to accept it.

However, both p1 (that everything that begins to exist has a cause) and p2 (that the universe began to exist) are amply supported by scientific evidence.

It's a possibility. But do we have any reason to believe that it is true?

Yes, there is plenty of evidence to support a reasonable belief in Christianity. But I prefer not to get into that in this thread.

 

[Davian]

Well, although I had not read or heard of philosophical arguments such as the KCA, Teleological, and Moral arguments, etc I believe that I had already had a concept of them from my own ponderings. But when I began to research Christianity, the thing that tipped it for me was the fulfillment of so many messianic prophecies. Later, that was backed up by other research, of which I think the most critical to our faith is all of the evidence surrounding the Resurrection. FYI, for most of my life, I considered myself an unbeliever, and later came to the bible as a skeptic.

Thanks for asking but I do not plan to expand on any of that in this thread...the unbelievers in this thread are keeping me busy enough as it is with the KCA!

BTW, I corrected myself in that I saw that your icon indicates that your are a faith seeker. I hope and pray that you keep investigating. I sincerely believe that it is more rational to believe in God than not and I would tell you that my life has changed dramatically for the better since becoming a Christian. However, I wouldn't attribute that to "happiness", which is a "yuppie word" (from a Switchfoot song) and comes from without, but to joy which comes from within.

To be clear, my "faith" icon says "seeker". not "faith seeker". I do not seek religion.

I ask about the KCA, in that if you do not find it convincing, or it didn't convince you, why expect others to find it convincing?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

No, I'm fine with speculating. And Stephen can do that all he wants. Let's pretend that he put that into a separate premise:

p1': There is such a thing as an imaginary time, which removes the necessity for a causal being.

I think that's a fair summation of it. But in this case, I would ask Stephen to present his evidence for p1', in which he would have to decline and I would not thus be swayed to accept it.

If paucity of evidence is a problem for him, it's a problem for you too.

However, both p1 (that everything that begins to exist has a cause) and p2 (that the universe began to exist) are amply supported by scientific evidence.

We've already discussed these premises and the way in which they are supported. I've also alluded to what has yet to be supported (the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo).