(February 21, 2015 at 10:13 am)Irrational Wrote:You're very close. Temporal priority is not relevant. Nearly all informed defenders of the argument know that it does not matter whether the physical universe had a start or extends infinitely back in time. The issue has to due with contingent beings versus what is non-contingent and fundamental.(February 18, 2015 at 5:40 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: I would not go as far as that, but until a reason is given to think that everything does have a cause, and everything does have an explanation, there is no reason to believe that everything has a cause, and everything has an explanation. With an absence of evidence, the most sensible position is to withhold judgement, and neither affirm that they are true, nor that they are false. And as others have observed, the questions themselves are less than perfectly clear, so it is entirely possible that we could be led in different directions with different interpretations.
I rather doubt we are going to see any proof of either proposition appearing in this thread any time soon.
I think we can. I provided logical proof that not everything has a cause or a beginning in another thread. What's nice about it is it's pretty intuitive.
Pretty much goes like this:
Out of nothing, nothing arises. But we know that nothingness does not exist as we have this reality existing. This means all things that exist either arose from something or have always been. Allowing only the possibility that all things come from something fails to acknowledge that at some point "back" in "time" (whatever "time" is), there must have been some eternal stuff leading to this reality. So we should accept that there are stuff that have always been (i.e. without any causes or beginnings).
Now what this thing may be could be anything. And that's where I believe we should withhold judgement about what this whole thing is until sufficient relevant information is revealed.
The existence of a vase (something that came into being) depends on a material (glass) and the pattern it follows (an open mouthed cavity). This can be further broken down into more fundamental things. The glass of which the vase is made depends on the existence of a more fundamental material (silica, lead oxide, etc.) arranged in a pattern (its molecular structure). The process extends down to a point at which no further dependencies can be had: primal Matter and the ideal form of unity.
Both primal matter and formal unity are non-contingent and do not depend on anything else for their being. Primal matter is that which has no other property than existence itself. Unity is the form by which particulars are distinguished from universals. Neither exists apart from each other since no form is without substance and no substance is without form, even though they can be distinguished by the intellect.
So where does that leave you. The most fundamental aspect of reality is a universal self-sustaining being. It is the one thing to which all particular things owe their existence. You can call that what you want, but to my ears it sounds very much like the God of classical theism.
