(February 11, 2018 at 9:23 am)Grandizer Wrote:(February 11, 2018 at 9:15 am)SteveII Wrote: You are confused because you still don't have the terminology down. I said that "if God exists, he exists necessarily". That means he is not contingent. Think about it--if God exists in the actual world, there are no set of contingent facts you can tinker with in a possible world (which are the rules to "possible world" semantics) where God does not exist because you have already established that his existence does not rely on any contingent facts.
So God is, by definition, necessary (according to what you just argued).
Yes--because the definition of God literally contains the notion that he is not contingent. If you try to insert that he is contingent, you get an infinite regress--and therefore meaningless to insert that concept.
Quote:Quote:You have failed to explain why the universe is not contingent (like Rickle's said it was). 'Contingent' means caused by something else.
Yes, and I agree, that per the definition that contingency has to do with dependencies (not just causal, by the way), then the universe is contingent. But it is not necessarily contingent on God.
The question remains then is: are there good reasons to think God exist. Very smart people have come down on both sides of that question. I'm not asking that you believe God exists (I'm not offering conclusive proof)--only that your points against the argument are wrong. You can have other, more legit reasons for non-belief.
