How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard

[robvalue]

Either there are things which need no creator, or there are not.

If there are such things, we can't rule out the universe being one of them. Examining things inside the universe gives no indication as to the created status of the universe itself. We have no created or non-created universe to compare it to.

If there are no such things, then God isn't either and we have infinite regression.

I think the reason theists aren't bothered by the idea of God needing a creator is because it never makes any kind of appearance except as a concept. If we could examine it in any way, the same questions would start popping up, and we've just moved the problem one place backwards. For example, if this is a computer simulation, God is a computer or a programmer. You now want to know where his reality came from, right?

You can't just define paradox answers into existence and claim that is sufficient. You still have to establish first the possibility such a thing can exist, and then even better some evidence that it does actually exist. This is all beyond the scope of mere philosophy.

And there is no paradox, it's just insisted that there is, so that a logical "only way to fix it" can be defined into existence.

The universe always existing is perfectly consistent. I'm not saying it has always been there, I'm saying we have no way or knowing whether it has or not.

Having said that, I really don't give a shit and you can have a deistic creator for free. You have all your work ahead of you trying to make it match a story book. It just so happens these first cause arguments are terrible. For starters, how did you rule out a computer simulation and the infinite number of possible deistic "god"s? Even after you did that, how did you shortlist the infinite number of interventionist gods to story books that happen to be lying around? And even then... you've got to convince me why I should care at all.

[Esquilax]

The skeptic has no interest in developing their own consistent philosophy. They just want to tear down your ideas and walk away smirking.

Yes, because you'd never sink that low, would you Chad?

Also, please don't mistake being unconcerned over your undemonstrated but shrilly asserted god claims with not having a consistent philosophy. An effective view of the world doesn't get hung up over fiat claims, nor is it uncomfortable in simply acknowledging those areas where we don't know everything yet. In fact, both of those things are what lead to this willingness to tear down flatly asserted ideas like "atheism is nihilism," or Kalam, or whatever special pleading or baseless dismissals you feel like bringing to bear on the responses to it, because that philosophy recognizes the harm that religious logic can bring.

We point out that you're dulling your knife with such fallacious logic, your only response is to claim we have no knife at all, and yet you accuse us of only tearing down your ideas?

[Mystic]

I've dealt with the no before time contention before. It doesn't do away with the past being finite, and there needing to be an eternal non-finite cause. The universe was obviously not in in eternal state from this perspective but started at time zero be there a before or no before that. Therefore it's not logical to state it caused itself.

[Angrboda]

The "What caused God" objection is indeed inane. Any atheist who raises it demonstrates their own ignorance. The problem with it; however, is that the objection presupposes so many other things. A recalcitrant skeptic can just keep retreating into a brier patch of modern analytic dilemmas. The skeptic has no interest in developing their own consistent philosophy. They just want to tear down your ideas and walk away smirking.

Oh boo hoo. Skepticism, since the ancient Greeks, has been about showing the holes in seemingly solid edifices. That's what skepticism is. If your complaint is that there aren't more system builders among atheists, say so. That puts the question of whose values are at stake here more plainly, they're yours. You are disturbed that there aren't more atheists who, like you, care about philosophical systems. Well that's not just atheists, the world of philosophy has moved on from the system building era, because it only produced cracked edifices. Your special interest is that you feel a certain discarded edifice can rescue your God. How many atheists do you expect to share your interest in that? You're being silly. Expecting others to share your concern over system building when it's not motivated by a concern for system building at all, but is a religiously motivated concern, is ridiculous.

[Esquilax]

I've dealt with the no before time contention before. It doesn't do away with the past being finite, and there needing to be an eternal non-finite cause.

Sure it does. If there's no before time, then the notion of cause and effect need not be applied. You're essentially saying that the notion that there is no "before" time began is irrelevant because you'd still need something before time.

The universe was obviously not in in eternal state from this perspective but started at time zero be there a before or no before that. Therefore it's not logical to state it caused itself.

What are you basing that on? The current science states that we'd need an entirely new set of physics and languages before we can even begin to approach what stuff was like at the Planck time and potentially prior to it, but you have some special knowledge about what could or could not cause our current universe at that time? How's that?

[Neo-Scholastic]

...your undemonstrated but shrilly asserted god claims with not having a consistent philosophy.

Shrill? That's quite hyperbolic in the current thread.

An effective view of the world doesn't get hung up over fiat claims...

I agree. That is why I avoid them.

... flatly asserted ideas like "atheism is nihilism," or Kalam,..

I publicly retracted the blanket statement that atheism is nihilism. You were there. To bring it up is unfair. Since then I have been careful to quality atheistic positions like physical monism and ontological naturalism.

Second, I never defended the Kalam argument. It is not well formulated. I do support the 'five ways' of Aquinas, which are different. You should know. You claimed they were trivially easy to refute. You said you would write a blog post demonstrating such. I speculated that they would do no such thing. You accused me of putting words in your mouth. I invited you to share your completed blog posts with everyone and promised to publicly apologize if your arguments did not match my speculations. You have not yet done so.

My guess is that refuting Aquinas is not as trivially easy as you asserted by fiat.

[Mystic]

There is no changing that time is finite. There being no before time, doesn't make the universe eternal then transient/finite. It means it's finite but to talk about before it doesn't make sense if it's the first thing created, since time is the measurement of before and after, but it still requires eternal being bringing it into existence since it wasn't always there whether or not you can apply before to it or not.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Skepticism, since the ancient Greeks, has been about showing the holes in seemingly solid edifices.  That's what skepticism is.

Modern skeptics are a different breed. They are just closed-minded nay-sayers. That is NOT a generalization of atheists.

 If your complaint is that there aren't more system builders among atheists, say so.

My complaint is specific to the 'What Caused God' objection. It is a knee-jerk response that carries with it a whole set of misunderstandings about ontological claims.

You are disturbed that there aren't more atheists who, like you, care about philosophical systems.

Not particularly. Most people really do not care to study philosophy or spend much time thinking about it. I only ask that when people do engage in philosophy, they should at least make the effort to be internally consistent and not simply present arguments of convenience.

...the world of philosophy has moved on from the system building era, because it only produced cracked edifices.

So your solution is to give up because the task is hard?

Expecting others to share your concern over system building when it's not motivated by a concern for system building at all, but is a religiously motivated concern, is ridiculous.

My motivation is to know and live by the truth. You may not believe that but that is how I think. At one time reason prompted me to adopt an atheist position. Further inquiry has lead me to believe in God. Maybe that too will change, but for now that reflects my best understanding.

[Angrboda]

 If your complaint is that there aren't more system builders among atheists, say so.

My complaint is specific to the 'What Caused God' objection. It is a knee-jerk response that carries with it a whole set of misunderstandings about ontological claims.

Well, that really is the main problem, most definitions of the ontology of God are just claims, lacking support.

...the world of philosophy has moved on from the system building era, because it only produced cracked edifices.

So your solution is to give up because the task is hard?

More like giving up fruitless avenues of research to concentrate on those that yield results.

Expecting others to share your concern over system building when it's not motivated by a concern for system building at all, but is a religiously motivated concern, is ridiculous.

My motivation is to know and live by the truth. You may not believe that but that is how I think. At one time reason prompted me to adopt an atheist position. Further inquiry has lead me to believe in God. Maybe that too will change, but for now that reflects my best understanding.

Fair enough. I do likewise and pursue materialist explanations because they are more definitive. I feel that you have given up on material explanations prematurely. Coming up with materialist explanations is hard, but it isn't fruitless.

[Ronkonkoma]

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I'm happy you agree with that, and hope that will happen one day, except for no heaven and no religion. But lets see the way things are now. 

We learn about history and how the Turks invaded the Balkan peninsula, destroyed churches and set up gigantic mosques facing the walls of Vienna. We learn about ancient battles and turning points, and saw our own brute potential to do massive evil. And we wonder who we are to have done that. And we feel guilt to the point of striving towards an ideal Europe not according to Jesus Christ at all, but according to John Lennon. The European constitution is a massive document of hundreds of pages. Never once does it mention Christianity when defining European identity. Instead, they moved towards a border free dream of utopia at the cost of national and religious identity. 

There are problems. Something had to replace those things. In the former Yugoslavia, that was the personal cult of Marshall Tito, and the dream of Communist Utopia. All religious and ethnic differences were pressed. Lets just see how that turned out at the death of Tito with the implosion of the country along ethnic and religious divides. 

In the modern European union the thing to replace religious and national identity was consumerism. Reproduction was cut off from sex, and universal contraception and the occasional abortion in case it failed, loosened boundaries of marriage, smaller and smaller families, and children growing up in families with absent caregivers. This problem intesified to the point of governments having to give monetary incentive to large families. Either that, or promote immigration to maintain the economy, to have a young labor force, and feed the hunger of the German companies for cheap labor. But the new generation of immigrants are generally not well integrated. The second generation of immigrants (the children of the first generation) are especially dissatisfied, not few are even going to fight for ISIS. 

Why did they not integrate? Is it because of racism, and the color of their skin? Is it because of their differing customs? Or is it because having been uprooted from their old culture, they are ready to integrate into the new, but the new has nothing to offer them any more other than consumerism. They feel unfed by this consumerism. They feel they should have been fed, but they still remain hungry and dissatisfied. As a response, they are prone to returning to the old cultures of their parents, only in a more radicalized way. The new wave of Islamic radicalism is completely cut off from their traditional roots, but they see it as a new alternative to the consumerism that has not made them well, only sicker. 

The reality is that there is religion, and there will be as long as we are human. There is national identity, just as people need a solid cultural base to thrive. How will the Europeans help the wave of migrants from Syria if they are unsure about their own identity? 

We have governments and borders to keep from anarchy. Before Chrsitianity, civilizations used to maintain order based on scapegoating, even to the point of human sacrifice. If there is no religion to counter it, or of religion is not taught based on the tradition of the ages, if there is no culture to feed them, my fear is that people will resort to anarchy. And that is dangerous because we can destroy the world at the push of a button.

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Such a dim view of humanity. Actually, from most of what I have read about the issues of European immigrants being dissatisfied, it appears to stem from an underlying racism similar to that in the United States (with our southern border), in that Europeans seem to be okay with the immigrants only so long as they come in and do the bottom-of-the-barrel jobs, rather than offering the full treatment that Europeans enjoy, as seen in France for instance.

There is also the problem if resistance to cultural assimilation by the immigrants, especially in the face of alienating prejudices by the majority against them, in which they form enclaves of relative poverty and social isolation, fertile ground for extremists to tell them that their identity is not to be found in becoming Europeans but in their religious heritage. I don't think it's a matter of feeling unfed by the "consumerist" culture, as you put it, but of being unwelcome.

The issues with Tito and that form of communism are, I think, wholly unrelated to the discussion here. I consider communism to be a religious ideology that simply has no deity (except the "cult of personality" of the leaders pushing it), in the same way that Taoism and Buddhism are godless religions (except they are, ideally, peaceful at their roots, whereas communism begins with the principle of an inherent conflict between the workers and the owners).

I wholly agree with you that the issue for all humanity is that we are often too unwilling to give up our old, tribalist identities, and that these identities (be they religious or not) can at their worst cause hatred and destruction. But I disagree in the strongest possible terms with your conclusion that "If there is no religion to counter it, or of religion is not taught based on the tradition of the ages, if there is no culture to feed them, my fear is that people will resort to anarchy."  Religious identities that override the ties of brotherhood, as between the Christian Croatians and the Muslim Serbs (in this case, the Christians were the aggressors), are as often as not the root cause of the fracturing of humanity. Though Europe is increasingly secular in its population, the countries that make up the EU almost all have an official Christian state religion, leading to increased feelings of alienation by the immigrants who have other religious affiliations. It is one of the reasons we atheists tend to object so stringently to objects and symbols of official state religious entanglement; we understand well the feeling of alienation that these symbols represent, and the dangers of church-state entanglement making a majority group feel entitled or superior.

As a former environmental scientist, I certainly agree that economies which are based on a requirement of perpetual growth in population are unsustainable for a number of reasons, but a discussion of economics goes well beyond the scope of this exchange. It suffices to say that I don't agree that "loosening of family bonds" has the impact you seem to be implying. This argument is often made in the United States by our religious leaders, but it is often based on incorrectly-remembered data about an idyllic past that simply did not exist. A great book on the subject, if you are interested, is The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz.

A dim view of humanity? Never. Listen to this. The continent is in trouble, the Schengen border-free zones are over. ISIS has infiltrated the continent with "thousands" of fighters, and that is official. It will be released as major headlines in the coming days. People are packing their bags as we speak from Yemen, Nigeria, Sudan and Afghanistan in a modern day mass-migration. Governments destroyed by the Arab spring are no longer there to hold them back. People "liberated" by the same Arab Spring are also on the move. 

All that is good, because from our perspective, everything that happens is very carefully calculated by the "Creator of All", who monitors the fall of every leaf that falls to the ground. A good and benevolent Creator who saw a world divided between those who are wallowing in all kinds of possessions and riches, and those who are "clamoring for a share in that prosperity" (Gaudium et. Spec - Constitution of the Church in the Modern World - a Vatican II publication). 

In the end, that benevolent "Father of All" must say, "Enough. We have to re-structure." 

I'm nuts and believe in the sphaghetti monster, remember? Remember those 320 conditions I think were needed to be "fine tuned" for the existence of life on our little blue planet? That's nothing. Only the very tip of the iceberg. In the end, it will all boil down to the good will in our hearts: "Forgive your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Besides, this is not the first time. Remember the fall of Rome? When the Barbarian hordes were approaching the city, and the people resorted to the Bishop of Rome for help, what did he say? "Never be afraid. If we have a friend like Jesus, we have nothing to fear." And Rome was sacked, but we were not afraid any more. Today the Bishop of Rome is urging all the convents, parishes and monasteries of Europe to take in at least one migrant family, or else start paying government taxes. The Vatican itself will take in migrants, and not only Christians.

When I talked about loosening family ties, that's a completely different issue I guess that has to do with neurodevelopment and mental health. 

The war in Yugoslavia is also more complex. Its a direct repeat of the same civil war that happened to the country during the second world war. Ever since then, they were always preparing for war under Tito.

From my part, mercy is the last word. The Mercy of Christ as He poured out his soul for a humanity he loved dearly.