What is wrong with this premise?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

What you're about to do with it.

Boru

[robvalue]

Also, to make such a sweeping generalisation as "everything" is to include everything that has ever happened in the universe, including parts out of our scope and times before we existed.

The terms are extremely vague as well.

[Heywood]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

What you're about to do with it.

Boru

I don't plan on doing anything with it. I'm just curious why some atheists think this is a faulty premise. To me it seems intuitively true.

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The movie as it presently exists didn't---but all the materials that resulted in it did. So nothing that is currently identified as "the Harry Potter movie" came into existence when the conglomeration that is identified as such did, and so your question is not "Did something that did not exist in any form come into existence and therefore require a cause?" but "Did something that did exist in one form or another change into a new form called the 'Harry Potter movie ' and therefore require a cause?"

This. Your example is not of something coming into existence, but of other things, which already existed, being rearranged into something else. Even if we used this definition, I'm not sure that you would get anywhere with it. After all, the physical laws can be considered causes. If an egg falls due to gravity did the newly 'created' brokeneggspilledonthefloor have a cause (i.e. gravity)?

Your claim is the movie is just a new configuration or arrangement of pre-existing stuff. Fine and good.....but isn't the configuration itself a new thing that previously didn't exist?

[helyott]

@Heywood
If you have a cause because you are existing what is your cause ?
Your parents ?

[Darkstar]

This. Your example is not of something coming into existence, but of other things, which already existed, being rearranged into something else. Even if we used this definition, I'm not sure that you would get anywhere with it. After all, the physical laws can be considered causes. If an egg falls due to gravity did the newly 'created' brokeneggspilledonthefloor have a cause (i.e. gravity)?

Your claim is the movie is just a new configuration or arrangement of pre-existing stuff. Fine and good.....but isn't the configuration itself a new thing that previously didn't exist?

If all that it takes to 'create' something is to reconfigure atoms, then not all 'creations' specifically have a cause (i.e. spontaneous reactions).

[Heywood]

Your claim is the movie is just a new configuration or arrangement of pre-existing stuff. Fine and good.....but isn't the configuration itself a new thing that previously didn't exist?

If all that it takes to 'create' something is to reconfigure atoms, then not all 'creations' specifically have a cause (i.e. spontaneous reactions).

A Harry Potter movie isn't just a configuration of atoms. It is also a configuration or words and ideas. But what I am saying is that a configuration itself is a thing. Three stones placed in a horizontal line is three stones placed in a horizontal line. Three stones piled one on top another is not three stones placed in a horizontal line.

[Darkstar]

A Harry Potter movie isn't just a configuration of atoms. It is also a configuration or words and ideas. But what I am saying is that a configuration itself is a thing. Three stones placed in a horizontal line is three stones placed in a horizontal line. Three stones piled one on top another is not three stones placed in a horizontal line.

This is semantically true, but we can still reduce any 'thing' down to an arrangement of the same few elementary particles. This premise generally implies something coming into being ex nihilo, though that doesn't seem to be what you're getting at here.

Does the creation of crude oil have a cause? How about crystal?

[Ryantology]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

The fact that theists use the phrase 'come into existence' specifically to exclude God from the cause and effect cycle.

[Heywood]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

The fact that theists use the phrase 'come into existence' specifically to exclude God from the cause and effect cycle.

I often hear atheist ask that if it is possible that God has always existed why can't it be possible that the universe has always existed? Which is a good question(although I would use "reality" instead of universe).

Since the premise can be used to exclude reality from the cause and effect cycle it is not specific to God.

[robvalue]

The problem is that this kind of argument tries to replace an eternal universe with an eternal God that made the universe. Nothing is explained, and much more difficult questions are added. Cosmological arguments have been destroyed time and again, and are at best "broken compass" because they can never point to any specific God.