(July 14, 2013 at 1:35 am)Consilius Wrote: In some cases, that would be very relevant to this conversation. In others, it would not be.
My argument is completely separate from me as a forum member. The fact still remains that the universe came to be in the past, be it 4 million years or yesterday. I could be a 7-year old Creationist that believes in a flat earth and that would take nothing from my argument, because nowhere have I asserted anything as fact based on my own authority.

okay, once again, 14 billion. Have you not? have you not asserted that there has to be a cause? have you not asserted a personality for this cause? have you not asserted that things can exist before the universe existed? have you not disregarded the fact that cause and effect cannot work without time and insist that they work and gave birth to the universe?

If not on your authority, then on whose?

Quote:If you like, disregard the last 5 pages because I don't believe in germ theory or that the New World is real. If that's what makes you comfy, make yourself superior to me and dismiss my arguments.
What you would get from that is a sin against rational thought: refusing to acknowledge that all ideas are equal.

Superiority? you are the one who said that what use are telescopes and particle accelerators and that humans do not need trial and error and you can arrive at truth without testing out anything. And you want to accuse others of acting superior? I suggest you start to address the fact that you're not gifted with special knowledge, and if you cannot prove your ideas, don't demand that they be put on equal grounds with theories that have substantially more supporting evidence than your "theory".

and oh my god, thank you for bringing up sin in a discussion about what is correct and not correct about the universe.

(July 14, 2013 at 1:35 am)Consilius Wrote: My argument is completely separate from me as a forum member. The fact still remains that the universe came to be in the past, be it 4 million years or yesterday. I could be a 7-year old Creationist that believes in a flat earth and that would take nothing from my argument, because nowhere have I asserted anything as fact based on my own authority.

That last sentence is kind of hurt by the second one. When was it that you demonstrated that the universe came into being, rather than simply changed form? When was it that you did something science has found incredibly challenging, by reaching into the point beyond measurable time and provided measurable data to prove that there was nothing there?

Quote:What you would get from that is a sin against rational thought: refusing to acknowledge that all ideas are equal.

All ideas are not equal in the real world. Some of them have evidence behind them, and others- like yours- are merely asserted repeatedly with no evidence at all.

(July 14, 2013 at 1:51 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: okay, once again, 14 billion. Have you not? have you not asserted that there has to be a cause? have you not asserted a personality for this cause? have you not asserted that things can exist before the universe existed? have you not disregarded the fact that cause and effect cannot work without time and insist that they work and gave birth to the universe?

If not on your authority, then on whose?

My argument is based off of human reason. That's the authority it is subject to, as well as to some observable facts.

Quote:Superiority? you are the one who said that what use are telescopes and particle accelerators and that humans do not need trial and error and you can arrive at truth without testing out anything. And you want to accuse others of acting superior? I suggest you start to address the fact that you're not gifted with special knowledge, and if you cannot prove your ideas, don't demand that they be put on equal grounds with theories that have substantially more supporting evidence than your "theory".

and oh my god, thank you for bringing up sin in a discussion about what is correct and not correct about the universe.

It is arrogant to assume I have the capacity to reason (the aforementioned 'special knowledge' you accused me of claiming to have)? We can sit down and answer questions we don't have to test out and arrive at accurate conclusions.
The universe must be at least as old as the oldest thing in it. I'm sure, to arrive at this conclusion, we dated everything in the world and then dated the universe itself. Yet most people can agree with me without knowing either the age of the universe or that of Neptune. Are we special for this? Yes. As a species. A chimpanzee can set up a table and grab a banana dangling from a ceiling, having been certain of the results of this endeavor beforehand. So can we. That's what logic is for. You would be bringing yourself down to assume that you need to test whether or not rat poison can be held in a porcelain teacup.

(July 14, 2013 at 2:30 am)Consilius Wrote: My argument is based off of human reason. That's the authority it is subject to, as well as to some observable facts.

I don't think it is human reason at all. It is your own brand of reasoning you are using. Thats irrelevant anyway, the point is: no matter how logical you think you have been when coming to your conclusions, unless you have evidence, these assertions of yours mean nothing. 'Human reason' doesn't count as evidence

(July 13, 2013 at 11:17 pm)Consilius Wrote: Everything has a cause, except the thing that caused cause.
The universe was caused by a Big Bang 4 million years ago.
What caused the Big Bang? A singularity of some sort. What caused the singularity? We can continue to go back. We can only arrive at an uncaused cause.

We don't need to go back any further. The singularity was the uncaused cause. Disprove that.

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(July 14, 2013 at 12:27 am)Consilius Wrote: Time and space were brought into being at the beginning of the universe along with matter and energy.
We live in a universe where everything has a cause. Why would a changing universe where cause and effect have a role in absolutely everything conceivable be itself uncaused? Why should our understanding of cause and effect stop with the vessel of all cause and effect?

Because - and read slowly, so that you understand - causation is a spatio-temporal phenomenon. Since time and space are aspects of universe and do not exist "outside" it, the causation is an aspect of universe as well and therefore does not apply prior to it.

I'm still waiting for that explanation as to how cause and effect works when time does not exist.

You can't keep asserting that there must be an uncaused cause without addressing that issue first.

I see this thread has completely been derailed... I figured I might add my 2c on the new topic either way:

What does it even mean for an agent to cause the universe to exist? Was it somehow the case that the universe had the property of non-existence such that this agent caused it to exist? I don't think things are sitting in some weird state of non-existence waiting to be *caused* to exist. For anything to go from x to y, it must mean that it first *existed* in some shape or form so that a certain property could be changed. So, it's more accurate to say that the universe always existed, and this agent made it go from some previously unknown state x into y - the state that we now observe. In fact, this is the *only* way of interpreting this relationship between the agent and our universe, because I have no idea how a non-existent thing can be fiddled with such that it's brought into existence, unless it existed prior to being fiddled with. That's the consequence of causal relations; the *necessary* implication is that the thing being affected *already* exists, because something non-existent can't be affected... it's simply not there to begin with!

The guy is a troll. I've said that pages ago. He's having the thrill of his life riding this thread.

(July 14, 2013 at 2:30 am)Consilius Wrote:

(July 14, 2013 at 1:51 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: okay, once again, 14 billion. Have you not? have you not asserted that there has to be a cause? have you not asserted a personality for this cause? have you not asserted that things can exist before the universe existed? have you not disregarded the fact that cause and effect cannot work without time and insist that they work and gave birth to the universe?

If not on your authority, then on whose?

My argument is based off of human reason. That's the authority it is subject to, as well as to some observable facts.

This is a joke right? you're telling me we can observe your god now?

Your reasoning is broken. you can ignore all the corrections and mistakes we've pointed out, but in case it isn't clear yet, you're the only one who buys your delusion.

Quote:

Quote:Superiority? you are the one who said that what use are telescopes and particle accelerators and that humans do not need trial and error and you can arrive at truth without testing out anything. And you want to accuse others of acting superior? I suggest you start to address the fact that you're not gifted with special knowledge, and if you cannot prove your ideas, don't demand that they be put on equal grounds with theories that have substantially more supporting evidence than your "theory".

and oh my god, thank you for bringing up sin in a discussion about what is correct and not correct about the universe.

It is arrogant to assume I have the capacity to reason (the aforementioned 'special knowledge' you accused me of claiming to have)? We can sit down and answer questions we don't have to test out and arrive at accurate conclusions.
The universe must be at least as old as the oldest thing in it. I'm sure, to arrive at this conclusion, we dated everything in the world and then dated the universe itself. Yet most people can agree with me without knowing either the age of the universe or that of Neptune. Are we special for this? Yes. As a species. A chimpanzee can set up a table and grab a banana dangling from a ceiling, having been certain of the results of this endeavor beforehand. So can we. That's what logic is for. You would be bringing yourself down to assume that you need to test whether or not rat poison can be held in a porcelain teacup.

oh you're sure? that must be enough to mean you're absolutely correct then. But you're not.

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html

we did not arrive at 14 billion years by dating the oldest things in it. we used those useless things called telescopes.

(July 13, 2013 at 11:17 pm)Consilius Wrote: I am referring to more like the universe we experience; all that is part of the natural order.
An eternal universe? Why did this universe change from one form to another at a definite point in time? Why will it do so again? And probably again?

You're rather missing the point. You are going to have to be more specific than that. If God is separate from the natural order, how could you even sensibly infer his existence from within the natural order? You're by necessity moving from your experience to that which has no known commonalities with your experience, so to even speak of it is rather odd.

If you're defining universe as the totality of existence, then it wouldn't make sense to refer to it as anything other than eternal - in some sense - unless you think something can come into existence from nothing at all.