The cosmological argument revisted.

leroy · May 10, 2021

ratiocinator said:
Happens all the time.

wrong, quantum fluctuations don't come from. nothing

leroy · May 10, 2021

ChristineM said:
So you define the logic, language and maths of another universe... tell me how you can do that?E]

yes logic is universal (multiversal if you wish)

And regarding your "you can’t have something coming from nothing in any universe"

Spontaneous creation of the universe from nothing

Just a thought.

Reed the paper, it doest propose creation out of literally nothing

Subduction Zone · May 10, 2021

leroy said:
why?
it doest follow......

my proposed God didn't begin to exist

The universe did begun to exist

so there is an objective difference between one and other

No, the universe as we know it had a beginning. And your proposed God does not exist?

Seriously, every claim that you make for your God can be made for the universe.

ChristineM · May 10, 2021

leroy said:
ok so you won't elaborate an argument........ I win by default

Bull, its easy to look up the word infinite, i i surprised you don't know what it means. If such ignorance makes you think you win, enjoy

ChristineM · May 10, 2021

leroy said:
yes logic is universal (multiversal if you wish)

Wow, you should publish, i know Neil Turok would be fascinated by how you know this... According to Andrei Linde there are more universes that the human mind could not comprehend (that includes the logic) than there are universes similar to our own

leroy said:
~~Reed~~ Read the paper, it doest propose creation out of literally nothing

Fixed

I have read it, obviously you haven't. A true vacuum bubble forms from nothing... NOTHING. It is created by quantum fluctuations but the vacuum bubble itself forms from nothing.

Anyway its a possible counter to your claim so job done

Evangelicalhumanist · May 10, 2021

It Aint Necessarily So said:
The fallacy is to assume that what is true of the parts is true of the whole (and vice versa). This is easily demonstrated to be untrue (see emergent phenomena, see fallacy of composition). The smallest parts of a living cell are not alive, but the organized collection of parts has that quality.

Surely you are aware of the limitations of induction. No number of consecutive heads from the flip of a fair coin tells you what the next flip will be.

No it doesn't. It assumes that the universe needs a cause, and in the case of Craig's version, assumes a whole host of features about this cause. Look at line 4. This may be the most extreme non sequitur I've seen. Suddenly, the cause is a person with just the characteristics his religion gives this god:

1. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.”
2. “The universe began to exist.”
3. “Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.”
4. “If the universe has a cause of its existence, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”
5. “Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is “beginningless,” changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”

This is just faith speaking. He's telling you what he believes by faith, and trying to make it seem like the inevitable conclusion of rigorous logic.

Incidentally, nothing can be said to exist outside of time if it persists or changes. Existence means the persistence in time through a continuous set of moments, and is only relevant to our world if it is causally connected to it, meaning can change it and/or be changed by it. If a god exists, it exists in time, and if it can affect our world, it is a part of our reality, not outside of it. This also eliminates the need of the term supernatural if all that exists is causally connected to nature. It's all nature. And if we can speak of a reality disconnected from ours such that neither can modify the other, then we are discussing something that has the same features as the nonexistent, and can be treated as such.

Disagree, but even if so, let that cause be the multiverse. If we're just going to pick one of multiple logical naturalistic or supernaturalistic possibilities for no sound reason, just that we like it better, we'll be making the non sequitur fallacy considered next. There is no more reason to pick the conscious cause, a god, over the unconscious one, and if you're a fan of parsimony in hypotheses, you'll prefer the multiverse, since it doesn't require mind, thought, memory, or volition.

Here's the problem - something absurd seems to be the case. Either something has always existed, or something came into being uncaused from nothing. They both seem impossible and counterintuitive, and though we need to be careful saying what must be true or cannot be true, it seems to me that one of these two unfathomable possibilities is correct. The error is to find only one of these two possibilities absurd and exclude the other without noticing that it is just as absurd. Eliminating either possibility is a leap of faith, and doing so results in a non sequitur - your conclusion doesn't follow logically from what preceded it. Only the introduction of an appeal to faith fallacy gets you to that conclusion, which makes the conclusion invalid.

Yes, thanks to the Law of Contradiction, which says that something can't be both of two mutually exclusive things at the same time. Of course, these aren't empiric truths. They're pure reason based on definitions.

But that law has dire implications for the god of the Christian Bible, who is said to be perfect, yet makes errors that it regrets and attempts to correct. No married bachelors you say? No imperfect perfect gods, either, by the same argument.

Notice also that the perfect cannot change (even its mind) and remain perfect. You can't move even one point on a perfect circle without it becoming imperfect.

This is an excellent post. I'd just like to highlight a little bit of it, in order to make what I think is an important comment. You said:

"Here's the problem - something absurd seems to be the case. Either something has always existed, or something came into being uncaused from nothing. They both seem impossible and counterintuitive, and though we need to be careful saying what must be true or cannot be true, it seems to me that one of these two unfathomable possibilities is correct."

It seems to me this leaves something unsaid: If something has always existed (my personal viewpoint), there is still nothing to tell you anything whatever about what that (thing, substance, being, whatever) might be. The leap to "God" therefore has always appeared to me to be completely unjustified.

PureX · May 10, 2021

ratiocinator said:
The universe didn't begin to exist. To begin to exist means there was a time at which something didn't exist and then, some time later, it did exist. Time is part of the universe, so there never was a time at which the universe didn't exist.

What's more, this is nineteenth century Newtonian thinking. Relativity gives us the idea of the space-time manifold, which is basically a 4-dimensional object. Time is simply a direction through it. The manifold as a whole is timeless, i.e. it never changes let alone starts to exist.

This strikes me as being just semantic sophistry. And anyway, time is not the significant issue, here, order is. Which is why infinity is not a relevant factor.

PureX · May 10, 2021

Evangelicalhumanist said:
This is an excellent post. I'd just like to highlight a little bit of it, in order to make what I think is an important comment. You said:

"Here's the problem - something absurd seems to be the case. Either something has always existed, or something came into being uncaused from nothing. They both seem impossible and counterintuitive, and though we need to be careful saying what must be true or cannot be true, it seems to me that one of these two unfathomable possibilities is correct."

It seems to me this leaves something unsaid: If something has always existed (my personal viewpoint), there is still nothing to tell you anything whatever about what that (thing, substance, being, whatever) might be. The leap to "God" therefore has always appeared to me to be completely unjustified.

UNLESS you understand that "God" is just a cognitive conceptual placeholder for that inexplicable mystery. Which is, in fact, the case, even if that is not being recognized by those employing it as such.

Evangelicalhumanist · May 10, 2021

PureX said:
UNLESS you understand that "God" is just a cognitive conceptual placeholder for that inexplicable mystery. Which is, in fact, the case, even if that is not being recognized by those employing it as such.

And in that case, let me remind everybody that "inexplicable" and "mystery" are very strong suggestions that you don't know squat about it. So to decide that it must be a "personal, powerful, purposeful entity" is simply an inexcusable leap of non-logic.

blü 2 · May 10, 2021

Link said:
The traditional reply by atheist philosophers, is that you are applying the parts to the whole (all parts need a cause, so the whole thing needs a cause), in case of infinite regression. However, another way to think of it, is not in this way (parts to the whole) but through induction. If you see through induction, that infinite regression would still need a cause, then it's not applying parts to the whole.

As for the inductions, it's to see the pattern, will remain in a infinite from the finite case. And this is true. No matter how long the line (even of infinite size), they are all effects, and hence need a cause. It's through induction, and not saying, because the whole thing is effects, it requires a cause.

It's subtle, but if you see infinite regression requiring a first cause through induction, it's a solid and there is no refutation. If you see it through parts to the whole, it's a unproven reason, and unproven proof.

The Cosmo Argument has a number of failings, all fatal.

One very obvious one is that

if everything must have a cause,
then the First Cause must have a cause.

And if God is said to be the First Cause, the question "What caused God?" must have an answer.

Another is the fact that in quantum mechanics, countless events occur in the universe every millisecond that have no cause in terms of classical physics (hence are dealt with statistically). Examples are the emission of any particular particle in the course of radioactive decay, and the quantum phenomena that give rise to the Casimir effect.

A third is that if in our universe time is a property or effect of something else ─ for instance energy, or fundamental particles, or both ─ then time only exists because energy (&c) exists and not vice versa. That is, energy/matter exists therefore time exists, and not vice versa, not energy/matter existing within time.

Another universe may have multiple dimensions of time, some backwards, some slantwise, &c, all arising as effects of matter and/or energy.

And if time in our universe were flowing backwards, we'd have no means of knowing anyway. Perhaps from a detached perspective, what we call effect is in fact cause ...

lewisnotmiller · May 10, 2021

Link said:
It's a legitimate argument and that's because the cosmological arguments argues for why the cosmos needs a cause and why God doesn't.

It creates an exception, and you apply an assumption that the exception is God. I see no reason to agree with that assumption, even assuming a first cause, and infinite progression from there.
That assumption (rather than any inherent flaw with your argument) is where we differ.

Irate State · May 10, 2021

Link said:
It's a legitimate argument and that's because the cosmological arguments argues for why the cosmos needs a cause and why God doesn't.

Why is it that always at the bottom of the jar of explanations there's only special pleading left?

McBell · May 10, 2021

osgart said:
The universe itself could be an uncaused cause and merely be ever-changing in it's form. Maybe it's cyclical, and somehow perpetually ever-changing.

Which if they are being consistent with their exception making....

McBell · May 10, 2021

firedragon said:
So you believe that a contingent cause alone is the cause? Can you provide your explanation for that?

No.
And even if I did, I am not going to fill in that gap with anything, let alone god.
I am not afraid to say "I Do No Know".

McBell · May 10, 2021

leroy said:
Yes, there has to be an exception , that is the point that theist have made for centuries.

There has to be an uncaused cause

And again, this is merely a claim.
You have no way to confirm its validity.

I am not saying it is not true.
I am flat out admitting that "I Do Not Know'.
Neither do you.
You are merely presenting your belief as though it is a fact.

QuestioningMind · May 10, 2021

leroy said:
why?
it doest follow......

my proposed God didn't begin to exist

The universe did begun to exist

so there is an objective difference between one and other

The fact that it appears as if the universe began to exist in its current form at the onset of the big bang says nothing about what the universe was prior to the big bang or whether or not it had a cause. You're making an unfounded assumption, just like you did with your couch and ball analogy. You assumed that the ball HAD to have been the cause of the depression, when it's just as likely that the couch always contained a natural depression that the ball fit into. You're assuming without any evidence that the universe hasn't always existed in one form or another, just so that you have a reason to insert your proposed god entity. It's an unnecessary step with the soul purpose of trying to justify an otherwise unsupportable claim for a creator being.

firedragon · May 10, 2021

Mestemia said:
No.
And even if I did, I am not going to fill in that gap with anything, let alone god.
I am not afraid to say "I Do No Know".

Ah. So you do not know. I can see that you are preparing yourself for the scripted response "GOd of the gaps", but it didnt get to that opportunity yet.

Well. You dont know. Thats great. But does that also mean you are not intending ever to get into a philosophical discussion whatsoever?

McBell · May 10, 2021

firedragon said:
Ah. So you do not know. I can see that you are preparing yourself for the scripted response "GOd of the gaps", but it didnt get to that opportunity yet.

Well. You dont know. Thats great. But does that also mean you are not intending ever to get into a philosophical discussion whatsoever?

Philosophy to me is a bunch of hypocrites arguing whose hypocrisy is sanctioned by god all the while claiming god hates hypocrisy.

firedragon · May 10, 2021

Mestemia said:
Philosophy to me is a bunch of hypocrites arguing whose hypocrisy is sanctioned by god all the while claiming god hates hypocrisy.

I will just ignore the God rhetoric because it seems like just scripted apologetics.

Anyway I guessed you would respond to my question with something like that dismissing philosophy and philosophical discussion which are actually two things, but that's alright. So you think philosophy is a hypocritical creation of hypocrites (though you associated it with theism I will just dismiss it since it is not worthy of adopting for a discourse). How about philosophy of science? Do you think all kinds of philosophy are all hypocritical creations by hypocrites?

sayak83 · May 11, 2021

leroy said:
But you would still need and uncaused entity.

Imagine a heavy ball resting in a soft couch causing a depression (a curvature)

You would naturally conclude that the depression is being caused by the ball (the ball is the cause of the depression)

Now imagine that the couch / the ball and the depression have always been there (from infinite past)……………….would that change your conclusion that the ball is the cause of the depression?....( I assume that the answer is no)…………

The point is that even if you assume an infinite universe you would still need an uncaused entity. (a first mover)

Actually it would. The ball, couch and the couch shape would be in what is called a steady equilibrium state. If that state existed eternally, then there IS NO cause effect relationship here at all.

The cosmological argument revisted.

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