No reason justifies disbelief.

[Abaddon_ire]

I'm not going to demonstrate them, as they tend to require more than a few sentences. 

Offhand it's easy to name two: the Thomist argument for actus purus, and Spinoza's argument. 

If these have been logically "demolished" I hope you'll point me to the relevant books. I would like to know more about them, and the only people I've found who can explain them properly feel they've lasted pretty well.

Aquinas and Spinoza. Old hat. Both have been done to death.

Why should I provide any reference at all? It is your claim that they are valid. Aquinas was a wingnut and Spinoza was misguided. End of. This is old hat. Not my problem if you fail to do your homework.

[Belacqua]

Why should I provide any reference at all?

Because you are sure they've been refuted. If you have certain knowledge of this I'd be grateful to know what it is.

Please note that I'm not claiming the arguments are persuasive. Only that I'm unaware of refutations.

You're making a positive claim: that the arguments are refuted. If we go by the rules usually invoked on sites like this one, that gives you a burden of proof.

[Mister Agenda]

Thanks for having a genuine go at it. Sadly, your first statement is a mere assertion, so is your second unless your definition of creator is so broad that a vacuum fluctuation would count. The last line is a question, and the only thing you could get out an 'I don't know' answer is an argument from ignorance.

Incidentally, the observations and math suggest that we live in a universe without end, it won't ever 'stop', just keep getting bigger and more boring.

Does that mean it has no beginning either?

That doesn't seem to necessarily follow. A ray in geometry has a beginning and no end, there doesn't seem to be a contradiction within the concept.

---

I think you only see what you want to see. I suggest some thinking on your own.

This sort of statement should at least come at the end of presenting your evidence and reasoning, otherwise it's no better than name-calling. You haven't even presented us anything to 'not see'.

---

So, my job is done here.

Was your job to contribute nothing of substance and declare victory? If so, well done, and I hope you move on to your next stop soon so you can have another job well done under your belt.

[The Grand Nudger]

A long and involved metaphysical logical argument has to do with the fact that things existing are held in existence by things that are essentially (not temporally) prior, and it appears that the chain has to go back to one non-contingent thing that holds everything else in existence. I know I'm going to get into trouble for citing this one -- people really get worked up by Aristotle. But it's just an example of what I mean by a non-empirical demonstration.

-an artifact of the system being used to pose the question, and the subject posing it...not a binding commitment on reality.  Logic requires terminus to operate, as it seeks to provide conclusions.  The universe may not possess terminus and it isn't in the business of doling out aconclusions. Hell, we can use logic to demonstrate this. If there really is no "first cause" then no valid means of inference can answer the question posed - logic simply isn't designed or equipped to do so, and so it prefers a universe that does meet the conditions for it's own validity.

Logic has a requirement of empirical demonstration, all the same. The answers it provides, the terminus it arrives at, true or false (in some sense aside from being logically true or false) depends on the quality of the assertions. If a then b is only as good as the if in a. Go ahead, give it a try, try forming a logical argument without invoking some thoroughly empirical assertion. What assertion can you possibly make that -doesn't- rely on your sense experience? The two (and neither may be the only way to arrive at knowledge, nor is it certain that either is...well...certain) are joined at the hip...and their shared hip is inextricably tied to the means and limits of human perception.

The truly amusing bit, in all of this, is that the notion of an un-caused cause plays with this overtly. It explicitly invokes the very thing that is antithetical to it's own method, as a way to get around the issue of it being unable to answer the question in question. If all things have a cause, then we have infinite regress and no answer to the question. That's that, it can go no further..at least not logically. So we posit some x that violates this rule, that violates the very thing we point to in order to establish it's own validity.

It's a delicious little knot.

Meanwhile, other systems exist and are used by people to satisfy the function that western philosophy attempts. Systems not built on the same rules and without whatever limitations those rules impose (but, obviously with limitations all their own). For those systems, infinite regress poses no particular issue...it isn't seen as some "problem of the universe" that needs solving. It's often taken as a pure fact of the universe. No begining, no ending, these two things are only important to a particular set of rules, and important only for practical reasons accounted for by the contents of the system itself. In this, any person who attaches their god to the particulars of western philosophy and imagines this to be demonstrative still has all of their work ahead of them, they will have to have the exact same argument all over again with a person using the other system, it's almost as if there's an infinite regress in faithful idiocy. Irony abounds.

-and in all of this...all of this, let's not lose sight of the fact that we're discussing a version of spiderman. Gods are superhuman characters in stories.

[Catharsis]

Complaints complaints complaints

why don't you think for yourself.

[The Grand Nudger]

......about, what?

[Catharsis]

......about, what?

Me contributing nothing of substance blah blah blah

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh, well, in that case I have, and have determined that you contribute nothing.

Anything else you'd like me to think about?

[Catharsis]

Oh, well, in that case I have, and have determined that you contribute nothing.

Anything else you'd like me to think about?

There's not really much interesting to find around here.

[The Grand Nudger]

So..nothing?  You have nothing to contribute aside from some comment about how you have nothing to contribute?

Perhaps you should go find a place that has things that interest you?