Hey everyone, i'm new here how are you all doing?

So, I don't really know what category I fit in, I have a set of beliefs that sometimes makes me want to say i'm an Atheist, but sometimes i'm not really sure if that would be actually true.

I plan on saying some of my beliefs and if you guys could enlighten me that would be great.

I'm also open to discussion on why exactly I'm convinced on any of those beliefs and would gladly withdraw from any of those positions if someone points me and explain to me that I failed on thinking critically on the subject.

I'll ask that you guys be pacient when reading as english its not my first language and this is the first time I write about that, so without further ado, those are my beliefs:

1: Yahweh doesn't exists, at least not in the way the bible describes him, because its clearly self-contradictory on so many ways it boggles my mind how can someone take it seriously.

2: I don't know if a guy named Jesus who could pull off (or not) some David Copperfield shit on his time existed, but if it did, I don't know how we can jump from there to "therefore god".

3: The universe coming into existance expontaneously (or uncaused) makes no sense to me, so the cosmological argument seem very compelling and the classic refutations of it don't really hold ihmo (maybe i'm too ignorant to grasp them, but that's why i'm here anyways)

So I tend (for now) to think its reasonable to believe there might be a first cause, and that cause would need be somewhat different from what we do know, outside of time, (because time its "a thing" of our universe) and thinking of this stuff makes my head hurt, because while I do think that the universe needing a cause its reasonable enough, we also can't really have it because it can't be anything prior to time, due to time itself being part of what makes a cause what it is.

So yeah, I have no idea.

What I do know tho its that the cosmological argument doesn't really point to anything like a personal god, it only talks about causality and how our universe usualy works and predicts that something would be "the first cause" and that cause would be somehow special, to avoid infinite regression of causes, anyways i'm not a theist, thats for sure.

And I think we can't really know if there's really a necessity for a first cause, because its not something we can really confirm so I might be agnostic on that sense, since agnostic its a position about "you think that it can be known?"

But I still find it very hard to believe that the universe (or the quantum fluctuations that might have caused the big bang, or whatever you want it to be your first cause) be an uncaused cause, unless it is something different from everything we know (maybe this is argument from incredulity, but to me it really wouldn't make any sense to have a natural uncaused first cause while everything else has a cause prior, including time itself, so the only way to stop the regression of causes its coming to a "special" cause)

So I think I might be a Deist?

Anyways, i'm really sorry if the text was not easy to read as English isn't my first language and its a hard subject to write about, but I would still appreciate any insights on what you guys think.

Hey, don't worry about it. Your typing is still better than some here who DO speak English as a first language.

And from what you've described, I agree - I think "agnostic deist" is the right term for your beliefs.

Now, people can challenge those beliefs and your reasons, but I think you've got the right term.

You can be a deist if you want. There's lots worse things to be than that.

The idea of a natural origin of the universe didn't used to make sense to me either, I just couldn't wrap my mind around the notion that Someone wasn't behind it all. Studying some cosmology cured me of that (the problem seems to be that out of a fair number of plausible origins for the universe, we can't collect evidence to tell us which is the most likely), but YMMV.

The cosmological argument itself is flawed, but I'm sure there's a thread devoted to that around here somewhere.

Anyway, welcome, and I hope you like it here. If you haven't found it already, there's a place for introduction threads.

How do you bridge the gap, conceptually, between a first cause and a god?

If an uncaused universe causes you trouble, why wouldn't an uncaused conscious entity with magical powers cause you that same trouble?

Remember, the cosmological argument started out as a blatant attempt at special pleading only to have an ad hoc revision added later to avoid that. That's your first indication that something is amiss.

Also, the cosmological argument takes what is a temporal principle, i.e. all effects must be preceded in time by a cause, and attempts to apply that to when time does not exist. How can you safely apply the principle of cause and effect when there literally is no space-time for a cause to precede its effect?

B-theory of time negates the argument. Don't look at time as a linear thingy.

Why can the cause not be a natural one? The cosmological argument may make sense to some but why is a god necessary?

Hey welcome

(September 23, 2016 at 10:46 am)Rhythm Wrote: How do you bridge the gap, conceptually, between a first cause and a god?

This is the problem. "God" is a meaningless word, as is "deity". If it just means "first cause of our reality" then it's just an extremely loaded way of saying that.

I find the cosmological argument rather week. It implies that there was a reasoning being that existed in nothing and with no time to be in. how does such a being exist? Much more likely that some natural process kicked it off that we don't know about yet remember science isn't finished yet.

Yeah, the argument is just special pleading nonsense. Science doesn't know the answer; a bunch of oversimplified statements cobbled together certainly doesn't either.