Now this is a logically airtight argument. That is to say, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is unavoidable. It doesn’t matter if we don’t like the conclusion. It doesn’t matter if we have other objections to God’s existence. So long as we grant the three premises, we have to accept the conclusion. So the question is this: Which is more plausible—that those premises are true or that they are false? 1.1. Premise 1 Consider first premise 1. According to premise 1, there are two kinds of things: things which exist necessarily and things which are produced by some external cause. Things that exist necessarily exist by a necessity of their own nature. It’s impossible for them not to exist. Many mathematicians think that numbers, sets, and other mathematical entities exist in this way. They’re not caused to exist by something else; they just exist necessarily. By contrast, things that are caused to exist by something else don’t exist necessarily. They exist contingently. They exist because something else has produced them. Familiar physical objects like people, planets, and galaxies belong in this category. So premise 1 asserts that everything that exists can be explained in one of these two ways. This claim, when you reflect on it, seems very plausibly true. Imagine that you’re hiking through the woods and come across a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You’d naturally wonder how it came to be there. If one of your hiking partners said to you, “Don’t worry about it! There isn’t any explanation of its existence!”, you’d either think he was crazy or figure that he just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the suggestion that the ball existed there with literally no explanation.
Now suppose you increase the size of the ball in this story to the size of a car. That wouldn’t do anything to satisfy or remove the demand for an explanation. Suppose it were the size of a house. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of a continent or a planet. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of the entire universe. Same problem. Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to affect the need of an explanation. Since any object could be substituted for the ball in this story, that gives grounds for thinking premise 1 to be true. It might be said that while premise 1 is true of everything in the universe, it is not true of the universe itself. Everything in the universe has an explanation, but the universe itself has no explanation. Such a response commits what has been aptly called “the taxicab fallacy.” For as the nineteenth-century atheist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer quipped, premise 1 can’t be dismissed like a taxi once you’ve arrived at your desired destination! You can’t say that everything has an explanation of its existence and then suddenly exempt the universe. It would be arbitrary to claim that the universe is the exception to the rule. (God is not an exception to premise 1: see below at 1.4.) Our illustration of the ball in the woods shows that merely increasing the size of the object to be explained, even until it becomes the universe itself, does nothing to remove the need for some explanation of its existence. One might try to justify making the universe an exception to premise 1. Some philosophers have claimed that it’s impossible for the universe to have an explanation of its existence. For the explanation of the universe would have to be some prior state of affairs in which the universe did not yet exist. But that would be nothingness, and nothingness can’t be the explanation of anything. So the universe must just exist inexplicably. This line of reasoning is obviously fallacious because it assumes that the universe is all there is, that if there were no universe there would be nothing. In other words, the objection assumes that atheism is true. The objector is begging the question in favor of atheism, arguing in a circle. The theist will agree that the explanation of the universe must be some (explanatorily) prior state of affairs in which the universe did not exist. But that state of affairs is God and his will, not nothingness.
So it seems that premise 1 is more plausibly true than false, which is all we need for a good argument. 1.2. Premise 2 What, then, about premise 2? Is it more plausibly true than false? Although premise 2 might appear at first to be controversial, what’s really awkward for the atheist is that premise 2 is logically equivalent to the typical atheist response to the contingency argument. (Two statements are logically equivalent if it’s impossible for one to be true and the other one false. They stand or fall together.) So what does the atheist almost always say in response to the contingency argument? He typically asserts the following: A. If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence. Since, on atheism, the universe is the ultimate reality, it just exists as a brute fact. But that is logically equivalent to saying this: B. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then atheism is not true. So you can’t affirm (A) and deny (B). But (B) is virtually synonymous with premise 2! (Just compare them.) So by saying that, given atheism, the universe has no explanation, the atheist is implicitly admitting premise 2: if the universe does have an explanation, then God exists. Besides that, premise 2 is very plausible in its own right. For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time. Now there are only two sorts of things that could fit that description: either an abstract object like a number or else an unembodied mind. But abstract objects can’t cause anything. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number seven, for example, can’t cause any effects. So if there is a cause of the universe, it must be a transcendent, unembodied Mind, which is what Christians understand God to be. 1.3. Premise 3 Premise 3 is undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth. Obviously the universe exists! 1.4. Conclusion From these three premises it follows that God exists. Now if God exists, the explanation of God’s existence lies in the necessity of his own nature, since, as even the atheist recognizes, it’s impossible for God to have a cause. So if this argument is successful, it proves the existence of a necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal Creator of the universe.
Well, your 2 has problems, I think. The question is "what did the universe come from". The only answer supportable by evidence we have today is "we do not know". There are ideas concerning how this universe got started, but they are beyond the technological capability of physicists to test them to see if they are false. Without that, "we do not know" is the only answer mankind can produce. The best physicists can do is to look back to the expansion of the universe called the big bang - that's the current limit on the "where did we come from" question. At some point, mankind may figure out an actual answer to that question of what the universe came from. Like physicists in the past, we may find ways to overcome our technological limitations - like Galileo building a telescope. In that case would you accept that as your 5 above? Would you be willing to consider whatever that answer is to be the real definition of God? I hope not. God is more important than being an easy escape for us not knowing what this universe came from.
You craft a straw man fallacy with elements of an argumentum ad hominem. What you do not do is provide any evidence of your assertion that there is a God.
If god exists he or it would be outside and apart from his created universe. For if he or it was inside this universe you could locate him. If outside you can never know. There could only be implications but those would be dismissed by atheists and embraced by theists. Hence I am agnostic. So if by faith you believe in god and it makes quality of life better for you then do just that.
If something appeared to you and proclaimed, ‘I am God’, how would you know it was ‘The’ God? Then too, do you suppose God would believe in God, a maker of all things?
A Not at the all. I just assume he is separate and not in his creation. Just as we are separate of the things we create. That is if he exists at all. Kinda hope he does for that would be wild!
Well now, if you buy the Christian doctrine, God inserted into this version of his creation. If, so, what is there to say God hasn’t been playing the game all along? And as I questioned previously, if someone approach you or anyone for that matter and said, ‘Hi, I am God’, how would you know the truth?
Some doctrine says god created and then entered into his creation via his breath of life into man. A tiny fragment of his essence of consciousness. To experience his creation from inside it. Enlightenment is when man realizes he is a part of god. Experiencing his marvelous, scary, exciting creation. I could dig it! How would I know if god walked up and told me? Like the time of Christ I would want a miracle. Like raising up the dead in a cementary. And having them to dance a jig in perfect time.
I am agnostic. But I studied religions once upon a time. I don't pray but find sitting quietly and letting the mind quieten down is beneficial. Kinda a Zen thing..
Where does the statement "Now there are only two sorts of things that could fit that description" (my bold) come from? Why couldn't there be concepts out there in the pre-universe (or whatever we might call it) that has the capability that you demand but that which do not qualify as minds? I don't mind going to the point where we consider something non-physical, immaterial and beyond time, but adding attributes "being" and "mind" to that something seems like an unnecessarily clunky explanation. If we allow ourselves to consider an unembodied mind, then I don't see why we couldn't also consider an unembodied non-mind, the mind part of the equation seems to make the explanation more complex without actually adding anything. And why can't abstract things be causes? (This is really the same objection viewed from the other side). You've picked the example 7, but not all abstract concepts are as simple as that. Consider quantum fluctuations in vacuum, the rule by which they can happen can be considered an abstract thing. They show that spontaneous things can happen, and that if they do, we do not need to appeal to a mind or a being (of course, the "pre-universe" and vacuum are different things, but it should be sufficient to show that spontaneity doesn't require a mind).
Great questions. What a Mind adds is the critically necessary ingredient for a rational explanation of how we get a temporal effect from an eternal cause at a particular point in time, that is, a free agent, that can both create or choose not to create. With non-thinking causes, and an eternity of time, every possible effect occurs. Were this true, our past would be an eternity in length, yet it is not, it's measured in mere billions, barely double digits. Complexity in an explanation is perfectly proper when a simpler explanation is inadequate. Abstract things are just idealizations and cannot be the cause of anything, they are not real objects. Take the abstract concept of an idealization, like a point at infinity at which two parallel lines meet, it's non-existent; that’s the very point of calling them abstract, they’re useful fictions. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/wri...an-uncaused-personal-creator-of-the-universe/ Why is that? 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The motions of elementary particles described by statistical quantum mechanical laws, even if uncaused, do not constitute an exception to this principle. These considerations at most tend to show that acausal laws govern the change of condition of particles, such as the change of particle x's position from q1 to q2. They state nothing about the causality or acausality of absolute beginnings, of beginnings of the existence of particles. In vacuum fluctuations virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. Rather the energy locked up in a vacuum fluctuates spontaneously in such a way as to convert into evanescent particles that return almost immediately to the vacuum. The modern picture of the quantum vacuum differs radically from the classical and everyday meaning of a vacuum-- nothing. The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause. One must be very careful about confusing predictability and causation. Uncaused does not mean unpredictable. When we ask whether the whole of being could come out of non-being; clearly the negative answer seems obvious. Quantum indeterminacy provides no evidence for an affirmative response. Quantum events require certain physically necessary conditions and while unpredictable can hardly be called uncaused in the relevant sense. There are any number of physically necessary conditions that must obtain for such a quantum event to occur, and yet these conditions are not jointly sufficient for the occurrence of the event. They are jointly sufficient in the sense that they are all the conditions one needs for the event's occurrence, but they are not sufficient in the sense that they guarantee the occurrence of the event. The appearance of a particle in a quantum vacuum may be said to be spontaneous, but cannot be properly said to be absolutely uncaused, since it has many physically necessary conditions. If absolutely nothing existed prior to the Big Bang--no matter, no energy, no space, no time, no deity--, then it seems impossible that anything should begin to exist. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/wri...-of-the-universe-a-response-to-quentin-smith/
What is the justification for demanding this free agent? The world only exists (perhaps even is inevitable), why would a creator need to be able to choose not to create? And if we find ourselves thinking that the source of creation needs to be able to not create, why does it have to be a choice, rather than a random fallout or some simple logic (like "nothingness is impossible, so the universe is forced into being, but once it exists, there is no need for additional stuff). With non-thinking causes and an eternity of time, every possible effect might occur (I disagree, but not in a sense that I think is relevant here), but we do not have that, I suggest we have non-thinking causes and limited time. Thus our past need not be limitless (even if time was infinite, it could have a start but no end). Fair, maybe abstract is the wrong word for it. Then we have some other concepts, that are maybe not abstract, but are still no less capable of generating a world than a mind would be (which I guess is more or less the same as my first question). Either way, where does the word "only" come from? If we can ascribe the ability to create a temporary effect from an eternal cause, why couldn't we arbitrarily ascribe the same quality to some other concept? (Which I guess also begs the question of in what sense minds have the ability to generate temporal effects from an eternal cause. I have a mind, but I am not able to do that.) You seem to be answering a slightly different argument than the one I made. My suggestion is not that the universe sprung into existence like virtual particles do, my suggestion is that the quantum fluctuations show that fixed points in time can be generated from concepts that don't original have a time aspect. A temporal effect from an eternal cause (or at least a cause that doesn't have an initial preference for a point in time).
We have a temporal effect arising from an eternal cause. If the necessary and sufficient conditions for the production of the effect are eternal, then why isn't the effect eternal? How can all the causal conditions sufficient for the production of the effect be changelessly existent and yet the effect not also be existent along with the cause? How can the cause exist without the effect? The only way out of this dilemma is a personal agent who freely chooses to create a universe in time, that is, agent causation, because the agent is freely able to act, or refrain from acting, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present. Say we have a person sitting changelessly from eternity who then decides to stand; we now have a temporal effect arising from an eternally existing agent. Similarly, a finite time ago a Creator endowed with free will could have freely brought the world into being at the moment of the Big Bang singularity. The Creator existing changelessly and eternally could choose to create the world in time. By exercising causal power, the Creator brings about a world that begins to exist. The cause is eternal, but the effect is not. In this way, it is possible for the temporal universe to have come to exist from an eternal cause: through the free will of a personal Creator. Forced by what? On what basis? With Eternity as the time element, every that can occur does, unless the cause has a will and refrains from acting. Say I choose to lift my arm. Prior to that, though I possessed within myself all the elements necessary to raise my arm, my arm did not raise because I refrained from acting. If you limit time, you also show that you have a relational rather than absolute view of time, as do I. A relational view of time holds that time is not independent of events; temporal relations arise as a result of the occurrence of events. Until the existence of the space-time universe, and the coming into existence of time, matter and space, there are no physical events and no physical time, so how do you propose to limit the duration of time to allow your brute cause to effect the universe? Now if the universe began to exist, it's reasonable to believe that a transcendent cause of the universe exists, and given a relational view of time that God is outside time; that is an implication of the argument, given a relational view of time. If it has a start, it's not infinite. If it began to exist, there needs to be an explanation for that existence. There is no logic in looking for causes of that which has always existed, because if it has always existed, there is no need for a cause to bring it into existence. Time is not such an entity. Take the heart of one of foundational theories under-girding modern Physics, the Planck era. This period is alternatively explained as Roughly Time (T) = 10^-43 seconds to 10^-32 seconds, AFTER... and the key question is AFTER what? After time, or T=0. Without a Personal Agent there just is no explanation of the origin of the universe. Now getting back to the premise of this panel, the job of the Theist is simply to show that the proposition i) God exists, is more plausible than it's negation, ii) God does not exist. Given that the Universe began to exist, it's more plausible that God exists, than that God does not exist. What would be some examples of what you are referring to? Without a Cause that also has a will, how would you propose to do that? You possess a temporal mind, not an eternal one. I can't think of any effect that you may cause that is not temporal.
There is no evidence that this universe is all there is. The cause of this universe is simply not known, nor is the "environment" in which it occurred.. You say there is an "eternal" - you call it "god". But, you don't have a justification for considering that "god" is the only possible "eternal". And, you have no evidence that t=0 was a creation event causing something to come from nothing. Humans don't have these answers. It's not that hard to find gaps in human knowledge. Simply saying that the gaps are filled by what you call "god" is not even close to being sufficient argument. Throughout history mankind has faced gaps in our knowledge and has assigned god as the answer. That is not a novel argument. It's not even a lasting argument. As we gradually increase human knowledge, we are forced to discard the "god" answer that previously existed. We find a cause for the heart other than as a house for the soul. We find that stars aren't actually pinholes. We find an alternative to the view that god moves the sun. Etc.
"So pragmatists see the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness. This does not mean that they have a new, non-Platonic set of answers to Platonic questions to offer, but rather that they do not think we should ask those questions any more. When they suggest that we not ask questions about the nature of Truth and Goodness, they do not invoke a theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or man which says that “there is no such thing” as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a “relativistic” or “subjectivist” theory of Truth or Goodness. They would simply like to change the subject. They are in a position analogous to that of secularists who urge that research concerning the Nature, or the Will, of God does not get us anywhere. Such secularists are not saying that God does not exist, exactly; they feel unclear about what it would mean to affirm His existence, and thus about the point of denying it. Nor do they have some special, funny, heretical view about God. They just doubt that the vocabulary of theology is one we ought to be using." https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm
You have that backwards. It's the self pride of those who can not bear the idea that they don't know it all - that they dont have THE answer. It's the self pride of Trump - who is totally sure that HE has the answer, as any other conclusion is totally unacceptable to him. It's an absurd human need so desperate that when there is no answer, that gap MUST be filled - by god if necessary. You can not claim that science has that problem. In science, when the answer is not known they state, "I don't know." That is not pride. That is interest in the truth.
