Can anyone provide an argument for a necessary being?

[downbeatplumb]

My wife cleans my underpants.
I need clean underpants.
Therefore my wife is a necessary being.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Aristotle himself was not trying to give a proof for a divine being. It just s happened that a working definition for a nessesary being came out of his argument. The question with which he was concerned was how things preserve their identity throughout change. The atheistic dilemma is to solve that problem without referring to a fundamental principle governing the tension between static being and constant change.

[LostLocke]

The question with which he was concerned was how things preserve their identity throughout change.

Can you give an example of this?

I'm thinking in terms of things like..... there's a tree here, I set the tree on fire, the tree is reduced to ashes. I'm not seeing much of a tree 'identity' in that pile of ashes.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The question with which he was concerned was how things preserve their identity throughout change.

Can you give an example of this?

I'm thinking in terms of things like..... there's a tree here, I set the tree on fire, the tree is reduced to ashes. I'm not seeing much of a tree 'identity' in that pile of ashes.

The most common examples are living things an personal identity. An acorn becomes a sapling then a mature oak. Is it the same tree at all stages of its development? Once you were an infant now you are grown. Are you the same person?

[RobbyPants]

Finally, I would ask the questioner to give a proof or argument that supports the position that the universe could exist and indeed does exist without an initial cause or Prime Mover. In other words, what is the plausible, natural explanation for the existence of the universe that you seem to refer to? If it is the singularity posited by the Big Bang theory, I would simply ask 'From whence came the singularity?' Be it known that I can accept an argument that would posit that the singularity and the Prime Mover are one in the same. In fact, based on the law of conservation of matter, I would argue that this is indeed a very plausible explanation for the known universe, I.e, God is the universe and the universe is God, or Dog or Mog or Gom or whatever name you want to attach to the Prime Mover.

Well, my official answer is that I don't know.

That being said, how do you know the universe isn't the prime mover? Sure, it's something that can't be proven, and I'm not asserting it's the case, but if the prime mover has to be something and we don't know how the universe did start, then it does seem like a possibility.

Whatever we pick to be the prime mover, one has to ask "what caused it?". If it has no cause by its definition, then it's really just a special pleading response to the question.

If we give that cause the name "God", and give God qualities like being timeless or eternal, then we have to accept that we are taking the existence of God and those qualities on faith and not evidence. Similarly, we have to assume the universe doesn't have those qualities.


TL;DR: I don't know, the the prime mover/first cause argument raises as many questions as it answers, so it's just kicking the "I don't know" can back one step down the road.

[Ryantology]

Positing a prime mover is as pointless as trying to count to infinity: there's no logical point at which you can say "everything must have begun here". Someone can always take it an infinite number of steps further in any direction.

[Tonus]

Finally, I would ask the questioner to give a proof or argument that supports the position that the universe could exist and indeed does exist without an initial cause or Prime Mover.

The most efficient approach is to ask to be introduced to the Prime Mover. That way, you can get to the excuses and rationalizations without all of the foreplay. And by phrasing the request in that manner, you can deal with the inevitable "what would it take to make you believe" by replying "a handshake."

God never shows up. The sooner you remind them of this, the sooner the whole sorry exercise comes to an unsatisfactory conclusion.

[Metalogos]

If we can all agree that everything in the known universe does indeed have a beginning and an end, then we can rule out the idea that things can go on existing ad infinitum and also that the universe could have existed forever, can we not? If we can, then positing some prime mover or creator being for the origin of the universe does not seem to me to be out of the question. Conversely, and nobody seems to want to tackle this, is the question of what would be a plausible alternative explanation for the origin of the universe without an agent that brings it into existence and sets it all into motion. Please, dear fellow thinkers, bring forth your best fruits and lay them on the table for us all to examine openly.

[Ryantology]

If we can all agree that everything in the known universe does indeed have a beginning and an end, then we can rule out the idea that things can go on existing ad infinitum and also that the universe could have existed forever, can we not?

I don't think we do agree. There is too much ambiguity to say that the Big Bang is 'the' beginning rather than 'a' beginning.

Conversely, and nobody seems to want to tackle this, is the question of what would be a plausible alternative explanation for the origin of the universe without an agent that brings it into existence and sets it all into motion.

The necessary stuff, whatever it is, that is necessary for the universe to exist as it does may be eternal. No creator god is necessary, and because eternity lies at the root of both explanations, sticking a god in there just muddies the waters by adding a step in the explanatory process which, itself, cannot be explained.

Given what we know, there is no rational or logical necessity for a creator, so that hypothesis should be discarded unless future discoveries do indicate this necessity. I personally wouldn't hold my breath, because every such explanation ultimately seems to end in flaming tautological wreckage.

[Metalogos]

If the universe is made of eternal matter, and it may well be, that still does not deal with the problem of how it all came to be set into motion. I am quite comfortable with a panetheistic explanation of the universe, i.e., that the matter of the universe is the eternal "body" of the creator being. That would make you and I and the ants and the swirling cosmic gas all akin, all intimately and eternally connected. Yet the question remains, "What set this all atwirl?"
Every action is a reaction to a preceding action. So it is in the macrocosm. So it is in the microcosm. To think that there must have been an initial action/movement that set, eventually, everything else in the universe into motion is both logical and rational. This type of thinking is the classic type of rational and logical thinking that the great pioneers of western philosophy are best known for.