God doesn't explain why there is not nothing.

The best it seems, atheists can do is a question mark. They cannot say how to universe came about. That is the best science can do. That makes the agnostic position the honest one. Christianity is also honest. They talk about faith because faith is required. They say that humans cannot comprehend God.

Earlier I asked the question when you come upon a computer do you believe it was designed and built or do you think it formed spontaneously?

This illustrates the evidence for God. The evidence is the universe itself.

People believe in things that cannot be proven in a lab. Love, for example. You cannot see it and the only evidence for it is the observation of its effect. Yet people agree it exists.

 

Whether someone chooses to call what caused the universe a "process" or God, this is the reality.
God exists.

 

I mean, if it is possible for theists to say that God does not require a cause, then it is possible to atheists to say the universe doesn't require a cause. If you're allowing something not to have a cause, then adding God into the mix is just a middle hand, an unnecessary complication.

How does talking about faith or faith being required make it honest?

Then why does complexity only really show up in things that could be subject to evolution (or caused by things that are subject to evolution, like a computer)?

We "prove" plenty of things in labs indirectly, not just by seeing it with out physical eyes. Besides, science isn't just guys in lab coats, it's a process we use to determine truth (or at least justified beliefs). For that purpose, we observe love directly when we feel it, and indirectly when we see its effect on other people.

 

Cause and effect is a construct of our universe. You said yourself the unverse came about by some "process". You say process while others say God. No difference.

What is not subject to evolution?

So observation is enough to prove something exists?

 

Well, a difference is God's personhood. I have yet to see a reason why that addition to the situation helps. Seems unnecessary to me.

Rock, water, sand, planetary systems and the like.

Depends on the context. Indirect observation also requires you to show that no other thing could have produced the same signature.

 

Who said God is a person?

Oh, so when one observes love it does not exist?

 

Sorry robini, I totally missed this post earlier. My basic argument is that if God existed and only God existed, then something would still exist. A universe in which God existed and nothing else did would still be a universe in which something (God) exits. Both atheists and theists presume that something rather than nothing exists. Neither have an explanation for why this is the case. IMO, that's probably because the concept of absolute "nothing" is meaningless and unintelligible. There is no such thing as nothing.

 

Fair enough, but something along the lines of person, intelligent, conscious, and so on. Since "intelligent design" is sometimes mentioned, perhaps intelligent is the right word.

...No. I'm saying for you to know that love exists, you need to find something which love could be the cause of and show that it wasn't caused by anything else. For instance, if someone mimics love in order to gain sex/money/attention/similar, then it wasn't really love, it just looked like love.

 

To address your post I will use the computer example. So if I see a computer I need to prove it did not appear out of thin air? Grow organically? Instead of knowing it was designed and built by an intelligent being.....that does not sound right.

Also, if I observe love there is no way I can know the motive.

 

Well, yeah, if there was a possibility of it appearing out of thin air, then you would need to account for that. Luckily, that's a rather easy proof (of course, I don't use the word "proof", I'm not talking about 100% or anything, just enough to warrant belief). We have effectively proven that computers appear out of thin air, just by normal conservation of energy and a bunch of other approaches. If you were to doubt those approaches, then yeah, you would have to consider the possibility that computers appear.

Ok, then you only know love in others insofar that you think you know the motive. Sounds about right to me.

 

So limited evidence warrants belief? Ok. I look at DNA and I see a fairly complex language. The only thing that can produce language is a mind. That means an intelligent agent produced DNA. In other words it was created by an intelligent being.

 

Now, this depends a bit on what you mean by language. Either language is just anything interpretable, in which case, I don't see that it has to be the product of a mind, or it is something which was written with an intent to be interpreted, in which case I'm not convinced that DNA is a language, however much it might seem as one.

That being said, we've strayed quite far from the original argument, I think. The thread started out about the cosmological arguments, but what you're arguing now is the teleological argument. The thread start didn't mention the existence of god in general, it merely referenced the cosmological arguments. Arguing a different line won't help the cosmological arguments.

 

We are discussing the existence of God I believe. That seems to be the topic of the thread. DNA is a great example of a design that most likely did not happen by accident. Just like the universe. As far as the universe is concerned why is there something instead of nothing?

 

You are somehow right, although god is god and not something. The problem is: We don't know whether a Creator (the maker of everything) is existing or not. What we think about depends on our belief. But for sure it exists his creation. We know it is something here. But also it will come the day, where nothing will be here any longer. So if once was nothing and now is everything and in the future will be nothing again - what kind of game is this? Why and what to do now here on which reasons, if nothing will be the result in the end?

 

The OP was

As you can see, no explicit argument is made that there exists no god, only that one particular argument is unpersuasive, that being the argument that the coming to be of the universe/time/space/energy requires a god. If you have another argument, that's fine and all, but it would be avoiding the question.

 

I do not see a question in the OP.

 

Deal with some nonsense? By posting more nonsense? Why?

To me this looks like an incoherent thought process. And I am supposed to deal with that?

I think your OP is nothing, so explain that to us.

 

There is something, because god wanted you to ask such a question. If you were not, if you were nothing, you could not voice the question.

Will that work?

As I was climbing up the stairs
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish, he would go away...

 

A creator creates something. If he created nothing, what kind of creator would that be? For apparently before he created, he already had nothing. And in the place of nothing he replaced it with something. Now, nothing is never something. If you think so, you have confused the language with reality. The word is not really the thing it signifies. For if so, you could eat the word, "steak" and not still have hunger pains. And so, nothing, is not something. It is the absence of something.

Anyways what kind of answer would it be, coming from god, if another god asked him why is there nothing, when a god could create something? The god asking the question of the other god, would point to the marvelous creation that he did, and might ask the god who created nothing, "are you just too lazy, or what?" So, surely a proper god would always create something instead of being satisfied with nothing? Nothing is rather boring. Perhaps god detests boredom. Well, if you look at this universe, no wonder he was not satisfied with nothing and wanted something.

 

One must assume there is a God, then assume it created something, then assume we were created by the assumed God in the Universe we assume it created. Such assumptions are not even worthy of mental masturbation let alone discussion.

 

It's true, it's not explicitly stated, but I think the argument pretty clearly addresses the cosmological argument in particular, rather than the idea of god on the whole. Imagine I had say "avoiding the point of the argument" rather than "the question".

 

Your mental ejaculation here creates no babies, it's only a verbal aggression and shows your own frustration. If the universe is without any "father" why exist natural laws and why are we only able to do physics with the help of mathematics, which is no science at all but more a kind of art of ways how human beings, the children of god, are able to think at all?

 

What exactly is the argument? That should clear things up.

 

There is no nothing....we are here..which proves beyond any doubt, there was always something.

 

The cosmological argument is "There is something rather than nothing, only God can explain that, so he must exist". The argument made in the OP is "God isn't an explanation either". (Both arguments paraphrased).

Even if the OP is 100% correct in his argument, saying that god is not an explanation, that doesn't mean god does not exist, it just means that the cosmological argument is not enough to convince someone. The OP is a bit sparse, but that's the argument I read out of it.