The Teleological and Cosmological Arguments.

[BlazingTruth]

I'm a preacher's kid. I lost my faith about 3-4 months ago.

Apologetics and systematic Christianity appealed to me greatly while I was still Presbyterian. When I lost my faith (much like Mother Teresa did), these arguments appeared to lose all credibility and rationality.

Boy, did I sure love C.S. Lewis.

I wrote a blog entry on my website < staff edit > which describes how I see them. < staff edit >
Thanks for your time and insight!

Regards,

David

 

[BlazingTruth]

< staff edit > I'm looking for honest and meaningful discussion. < staff edit >

 

[OzSpen]

< staff edit > I'm looking for honest and meaningful discussion < staff edit >
This isn't what I expected, not at all.

Why don't you summarise the teleological argument for God's existence and tell us what difficulties you see with it? Please reference your version of the teleological argument.

Are you saying that you once were an evangelical, Bible-believing Christian and that you have fallen away/apostasised from the Christian faith? If you are a preacher's kid, in what kind of church was your father a preacher?

Sincerely, Oz

 

[BlazingTruth]

@Oz,

Thanks for the response. The teleological argument is an argument from design. God is often compared to a potter with his clay, the great watchmaker, etc. This begs the question of who/what created God? Surely there's no super-God or super-super-God. The response by Christians is that God is, was, and is to come -- he is eternal and self-sufficient. But it seems like an arbitrary jump to assume God is eternal, when it can just as easily be said that the Universe is infinite. Occam's Razor cuts God out of the picture here.

My mother is an ordained minister who is currently working as a chaplain. She went to Princeton Theological Seminary, and I lived in the seminary housing there for a few years. I lost my faith about 3-4 months ago, and was a member of the Presbyterian (PCUSA) church.

Thank you,
D

 

[2thePoint]

But we observe that the universe is running down toward eventual heath death, and we know that it is impossible for anything to cause its own existence. So no matter what you call it or how far back in time you go, you must confront the First Cause. We also know that no effect is greater than its cause, so the First Cause must be greater in every way than the universe: size, complexity, power, etc. And it must be non-physical, since it initiated the laws of physics and all physical matter those laws act upon. So this First Cause must be eternally self-existent and non--physical, which God qualifies as.

In order to show that the physical universe is eternal, you must prove (not merely postulate or assert) that it is not running down toward eventual heat death. And being unable to do so, you then have to propose some other cause for it.

And I too would be interested in hearing details about your alleged one-time salvation.

 

[BlazingTruth]

@2thePoint, that shows a very poor and oversimplified understanding of physics, in my opinion. And it's not a bad thing -- science simply may not know the answer at the moment. Modern theories suggest that the net energy of the Universe is zero, so it may well be that if you were to sum everything up, nothing would exist. Quantum fluctuations and particle-pair annihilation are not fully understood, so as to explain why there is something rather than nothing. It just happens, but we don't know "how" as of now. And I that's the point of the LHC, to figure it out. Talk about the Law of Conservation of Energy in action!

Other theories suggest a Big Bounce effect, whereby the Universe is cyclical in nature, which may provide insight into why certain constants are as they are. I do not have to prove anything about the end of the universe to determine its beginning, although it may help by this logic. All evidence points to a Big Bang and cosmic inflation. It is arbitrary to assert a First Cause behind the Universe without any evidence. I do feel that, further, to call this First Cause" the Christian God Yahweh who's personally concerned with my actions, and son died on the cross for our "sins" is a bit presumptuous.

Also, what do you mean by "alleged one-time salvation". I was Presbyterian for 18 years, and have been a Christian longer than I have been an atheist. I'd love to talk about total depravity and Calvinism, but we can save that for elsewhere.

Thanks for your response!

 

[2thePoint]

@2thePoint, that shows a very poor and oversimplified understanding of physics, in my opinion. And it's not a bad thing -- science simply may not know the answer at the moment.

Those two statements conflict; how can I have a "poor and oversimplified understanding of physics" (didn't know I was to be writing a thesis in this thread) when "science simply may not know the answer"? Science is observation, and any theory purporting to be scientific must be falsifiable. Theoretical physics is a house of cards made of nothing but math, and as some physicists are finally admitting, can paint itself into some very tight corners.

Modern theories suggest that the net energy of the Universe is zero, so it may well be that if you were to sum everything up, nothing would exist. Quantum fluctuations and particle-pair annihilation are not fully understood, so as to explain why there is something rather than nothing. It just happens, but we don't know "how" as of now. And I that's the point of the LHC, to figure it out. Talk about the Law of Conservation of Energy in action!

"Not fully understood", yet my understanding is "poor". "It just happens but we don't know how", yet my understanding is "poor". Gotcha. And I'm truly unimpressed by the rest of the guesses, stories, and suggestions. No proof needed? Then it isn't science.

Also, what do you mean by "alleged one-time salvation". I was Presbyterian for 18 years, and have been a Christian longer than I have been an atheist. I'd love to talk about total depravity and Calvinism, but we can save that for elsewhere.

Thanks for your response!

Being a Presby or a Catholic or a Baptist means exactly nothing about salvation. And I'm well familiar with the Calvinist system but reject it, and don't want to get into that here.

So I ask you: what is salvation and how did you get it?

 

[BlazingTruth]

It is poor because it is oversimplified. That wasn't an attack on you, I was simply trying to say that we don't have all the answers. And you're right again, it all must be falsifiable. The Theory of God, if you will, is not. The point in those examples was to show that God isn't the ONLY possibility.

I'm the first to admit that I can neither confirm nor deny God's existence, but I can assert with equal confidence that God does not exist and that fairies do not exist. I don't have the answers, and I can't say with any degree of certainty that God is the way, the truth, and the life..

And I do not believe in salvation, death is the end of consciousness. Nothing transcends your death. No heaven, no hell, no angels, no demons. Just like before you were born, if you'd want to reference Mark Twain. Hope that clarifies a bit.

 

[addo]

This blogpost ... I remember reading a few days ago. I suppose you linked it in some other forum? But anyway, it is irrelevant now.

Concerning the cosmological argument, I remember reading this a few days ago. I thought it was interesting.

EDIT: By the way, welcome to this Christian forum. I hope you'll find your stay here enjoyable.

 

[2thePoint]

It is poor because it is oversimplified. That wasn't an attack on you, I was simply trying to say that we don't have all the answers. And you're right again, it all must be falsifiable. The Theory of God, if you will, is not. The point in those examples was to show that God isn't the ONLY possibility.

Again, if science doesn't know, my view cannot possibly be labeled poor and oversimplified. The idea of increasing universal entropy toward heat death is the first thing you learn in physics class, and no amount of detail since then has ever contradicted it. We observe entropy; that's a scientific fact, and it is not any less so simply by virtue of its simplicity. Some of the most profound things are the simplest.

But as for the First Cause, you seem to miss my point: there must be one, and it must be non-physical and eternal. This isn't "one" possibility but the only possibility. The only question is what you may call it and what attributes you may assign to it.

I'm the first to admit that I can neither confirm nor deny God's existence, but I can assert with equal confidence that God does not exist and that fairies do not exist. I don't have the answers, and I can't say with any degree of certainty that God is the way, the truth, and the life..

You can hardly speculate about the nature of the First Cause until you know it must be there and must be greater than the "effect" of the observable universe. But I had hoped you knew that the "flying spaghetti monster" or "pink unicorn" argument is fallacious. After all, many readily believe in a whole alphabet soup of things they cannot directly detect, but the secondary evidence is compelling enough (e.g. subatomic particles). Yet when the topic is origins, suddenly this secondary evidence is deemed fanciful and as imaginary as the tooth fairy. So at the very least, the "fairies" reference is only trotted out when it is convenient but embraced when it is needed for theoretical physics.

And I do not believe in salvation, death is the end of consciousness. Nothing transcends your death. No heaven, no hell, no angels, no demons. Just like before you were born, if you'd want to reference Mark Twain. Hope that clarifies a bit.

Yet you claim to have been a Christian. What you say here makes it obvious that you never were. And no, I don't get my theology from Mark Twain.

 

[BlazingTruth]

Glad to see my writing is getting some sort of a following somewhere.

And I'll take a look at your link and get back to you soon. Thanks for your xenia.

 

[Walter Kovacs]

I'm not a big fan of either argument, honestly. C.S. Lewis did a remarkable job, however, in 'Miracles,' of giving good ground to believe in the supernatural justifiably. But evidential apologetics only gets you so far, IMO.

. But it seems like an arbitrary jump to assume God is eternal, when it can just as easily be said that the Universe is infinite.

There is actually a good deal of evidence saying the universe is not infinite (there's also some, not as much, but some, saying the opposite), but as I said, I don't really find those arguments terribly convincing. But the reason that God is uncaused is because God by His nature is the essential eternal uncaused cause, which IMO seems reasonable to suppose the existence of. Who created God? No one. God is the eternal constant by which all things come into being. Why did no one create God? Because if God has the property of being created He isn't God; it's part of God's essential nature to be uncreated. Like I said, not a great argument.

'Hume's criticisms seems correct. The conclusion to be drawn, I think, is that the teleological argument, like the cosmological, is unsuccessful.' (Alvin Plantinga, 'God, Freedom, and Evil,' pp. 84)

I'm going to post a long article dealing with the whole 'FSM' thing; feel free to skip it if it bores you. But it is an EXCELLENT article that deals well with that objection.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7249

"Let them at least learn the nature of the religion they are attacking, before they attack it. If this religion boasted of having a clear vision of God, and of possessing Him plain and unveiled, then to say that nothing we see in the world reveals Him with this degree of clarity would indeed be to attack it. But it says, on the contrary, that man is in darkness and far from God, that He has hidden Himself from man's knowledge, and that the name He has given Himself in the Scriptures is in fact The Hidden God (Is 45:15). Therefore if it seeks to establish these two facts: that God has in the church erected visible signs by which those who sincerely seek Him may recognize Him, and that he has nevertheless so concealed them that He will only be perceived by those who seek Him with all their hearts, what advantage can the attackers gain when, while admitting that they neglect to seek for the truth, they yet cry that nothing reveals it? For the very darkness in which they lie, and for which they blame the Church, establishes one of her two claims, without invalidating the other, and also, far from destroying her doctrine, confirms it" (Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 335).

"To obtain anything from God, the outward must be joined to the inward; that is to say we must kneel and pray alone, etc. so that proud man, who would not submit to God, may now be subject to the body. To expect any help from this outward act is superstition; a refusal to join it to our inward acts is pride. For we must not misunderstand ourselves; we are as much machines as mind. And hence the means by which a man is persuaded are not demonstration alone. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs convince only the mind. It is habit that produces our strongest and most accepted proofs; it guides the machine, which carries the mind with it unconcsiously. Who has proved that there will be a morrow and that we will die?" -Blaise Pascal

Apologetics and systematic Christianity appealed to me greatly while I was still Presbyterian. When I lost my faith (much like Mother Teresa did), these arguments appeared to lose all credibility and rationality.

Apologetics are a weak crutch. Perhaps you shuld look into Apophatic theology, though IMO while lots of problems caused by evidentialism do go away, it doesn't answer all the questions you undoubtedly have. I find that a combination of the two serve quite well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology#In_the_Christian_tradition

'Systematic theology is the enemy of true theology.'
- Karl Barth

Sounds to me like you thought faith was 'belief in a proposition with no evidence to justify belief.' That's your first mistake. I won't contribute much more to this thread, I generally stay away from topics like these. Feel free to message me if you wish to talk further about any topic relating to these subjects. I also recommend this group:

http://www.christianforums.com/groups/390/

We're pretty cool.

 

[Hentenza]

Thread moved from Christian Apologetics to Exploring Christianity

 

[elopez]

The teleological argument is an argument from design. God is often compared to a potter with his clay, the great watchmaker, etc. This begs the question of who/what created God? Surely there's no super-God or super-super-God. The response by Christians is that God is, was, and is to come -- he is eternal and self-sufficient. But it seems like an arbitrary jump to assume God is eternal, when it can just as easily be said that the Universe is infinite. Occam's Razor cuts God out of the picture here.

If God created the universe it isn't a jump at all to say God is eternal, especially not arbitrarily. If God created the universe, He existed prior to the existence of the universe. If God existed prior to the universe He existed prior to time itself.

Being that God existed in a state of timelessness there would have been no concept of cause/effect that could have taken place. Thus, there could have been no previous creator but the one God who existed timelessly. If there was no concept of time then God would have had no beginning, so He always has existed and will continue to exist.

Also it is not easy at all to get away with suggesting the universe is infinite as there is much evidence against the idea.

 

[elopez]

If you replaced "God" with "nothing", it still essentially makes about the same sense. Except, of course, "nothing" isn't masculine. But hey. Neither is a non-existent being.

I understand your opinions about Gods non existence but being that this thread and the OP is under the assumption of God there would be no point in debate whether He exists or not. So this is rather pointless.

You are also making a false dichotomy, because there are other possibilities. What if we are part of a multi-dimensional multiverse, and our current universe was created from a collision between two already existing universes?

No false dichotomy. The multiverse theory is just as unstable as an infinite universe theory -- all the evidence points against it.

Again...

If, as you say, time did not exist before the universe, then causality has no meaning. So why do you feel the need to reference a 'first cause' if there is no such thing?

Right, causality has no meaning in eternity. I'm not saying there is no first cause, but that the first cause initiated creation/time with the first creative act.

 

[addo]

Another thing, I know this is off-topic, but what is your stance on the other arguments offered for God's existence?

 

[2thePoint]

In what science class did you learn that the "First Cause" for our universe must be non-physical and eternal?

No science class talks about the First Cause; that isn't where I learned it. It's essentially the "elephant in the living room", the Great Question that nobody will touch, because it might make them consider the possibility of God. What I did say I learned in physics classes is that the universe is running down toward eventual heat death. But there is no denying that things cannot cause their own existence, so when you combine that fact with the one about increasing entropy, you get an eternal and non-physical First Cause. It's logic based on scientific and philosophical premises.

The Big Bang only goes to a split second after the Universe began to exist, not the point of creation.

You observed this, or you accept it by faith? Theories are only "just so" stories without observation and a way to falsify them. At any rate, it still refuses to face the problem of initial existence of matter and the force that caused it to do something.

Could our universe not have come from another universe? The death of all old matter could result in the life of a new universe (conservation of energy).

This too fails to face the question of origins, simply moving the line in the sand to yet another time and place where nobody could possibly ever investigate it. Coulda, woulda, shoulda isn't science but philosophy.

No, the cause of our universe does not hold the requirement of being infinite and non-physical. We just don't understand all the physics yet.

It does if you follow logic and science. You have much more faith than I do.

 

[Walter Kovacs]

And that's why I'm not a big fan of 'proofs' or 'arguments' for God.

 

[2thePoint]

Uhh, I've accepted it as a scientific theory? The Big Bang does not explain the actual cause of our universe, just that it all exploded from a single point of energy. It says nothing about the origin of energy.

You haven't? Then what sort of theory do you call it, if it isn't scientific? Would you be willing to go to a group of evolutionists and tell them that BB isn't a scientific theory?

But you're exactly right: BB does not face the problem of origin of the universe, and refuses to do so because that would lead inexorably to the possibility of God. The OP is supposed to be about that very question, so why are we even discussing BB then?

Your way of facing the question of origins is by saying "Because science hasn't yet shown us the cause of the universe, it must be God." You seem to be so hell-bent on using science to explain your reality...where is the science in God? Where is your science that shows God is the creator of the universe? Where is your science that shows there was nothing before our universe?

No. This is not what I'm saying at all. All I've said is that science tells us the physical uni is running down and thus not eternal, and that nothing can cause itself because every cause is greater than its effect. Philosophy concurs, because it is obvious that nothing can cause its own existence since it would have to exist before it existed, an absurdity. So we have no choice but to propose a non-physical, uncaused First Cause. That's all I've said. If you have a problem with that, you have a problem with science and logic.

God is purely philosophical lol.

lol... an excellent summation of your arguments. Toodles!

 

[Hisbygrace]

MOD HAT ON
This thread has undergone a moderate cleanup. If you find your post(s) have been removed or edited it is because they were victims of the cleanup. Please remember when posting to stay within the Sitewide Rules and Statement of Purpose guidelines for each forum. Please pay careful attention to the following:

Flaming
&#9679; Do not insult, belittle, mock, goad, personally attack, threaten, harass, or use derogatory nicknames in reference to other members or groups of members. Address the context of the post, not the poster.
&#9679; If you are flamed, do not respond in-kind. Alert staff to the situation by utilizing the report button. Do not report another member out of spite.

Off-Topic posts

Respect and become familiar with each forum's Statement of Purpose. Start threads that are relevant to that forum's stated purpose; submit replies that are relevant to the topic of discussion. Off Topic posts will be moved or removed.​

Exploring Christianity FSG's - PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING!!

Exploring Christianity FSG's - PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING!! ​

Exploring Christianity Forum
This is a forum where non-Christians are encouraged to ask questions about those aspects of the Christian faith which seem hard to understand or accept, and where Christians can enter into discussion with them on these questions.

We recognize that real seekers are looking for real answers, and the first reply given may be insufficient to achieve this. It is acceptable for the Original Poster (OP) to probe the answers given, and to continue the discussion on lines which help to clarify their understanding of the Christian faith. If another non-Christian seeker wishes to ask questions about the Christian faith, they may start their own thread. No more than one non-Christian (the OP) may post in a thread.

All Original Posts (OPs) -- the posts that start a new thread -- must contain an identifiable question about the Christian faith. Questions and statements that are direct flames or that imply a flame against Christianity, Christians, or any other group are inappropriate to this site, and will be removed.

The following guidelines apply, in addition to, or as clarification of, Christian Forums rules.

Thank you for your co-operation!

MOD HAT OFF​

​