A simple challenge for atheists

[Davka]

Then another problem is, what did God create the universe from?
If something can't come from nothing, then he must have used something to create the universe. "Speaking" it into existence implies that the universe just 'popped' into existence, from nothing. Which would mean something can come from nothing.

Which is it?

You are confining God to the rules of our universe. God is outside of our universe. He created the rules.

You are confining the origin of our universe to the rules of our current universe. The origin of our universe is outside our current universe. The Big Bang created the rules.

There is a small-yet-significant difference between our two statements: there is empirical evidence for my statement.

[Cheerful Charlie]

[quote='bob96' pid='841825' dateline='1420928384']


You are confining the origin of our universe to the rules of our current universe. The origin of our universe is outside our current universe. The Big Bang created the rules.

There is a small-yet-significant difference between our two statements: there is empirical evidence for my statement.

There is a problem with a god that creates the rules. God is defined as perfectly good. God has a good nature and free will. God does no evil of his own free will.

A perfectly good God would eliminate all moral evil if possible. So such a God would create mankind with a god-like free will and a god-like good nature. Any reason we might imagine why this cannot be so is dead on arrival because God makes the rules and his will cannot be thwarted.

I call this the problem of super-omnipotence. Why is there moral evil with a God that creates the rules? This eliminates the idea that there is some unknown reason God cannot do this. God so defined is impossible.

At worse, God does not exist, at best that any possible God is not creator of the rules of the Universe, that the nature and rules of the Universe are naturalistic and beyond any possible God's power to control.

The claims God must exist to explain the existence of the Universe collapses of its own internal self contradictions.

[dyresand]

[quote='bob96' pid='841825' dateline='1420928384']


You are confining the origin of our universe to the rules of our current universe. The origin of our universe is outside our current universe. The Big Bang created the rules.

There is a small-yet-significant difference between our two statements: there is empirical evidence for my statement.

There is a problem with a god that creates the rules. God is defined as perfectly good. God has a good nature and free will. God does no evil of his own free will.

A perfectly good God would eliminate all moral evil if possible. So such a God would create mankind with a god-like free will and a god-like good nature. Any reason we might imagine why this cannot be so is dead on arrival because God makes the rules and his will cannot be thwarted.

I call this the problem of super-omnipotence. Why is there moral evil with a God that creates the rules? This eliminates the idea that there is some unknown reason God cannot do this. God so defined is impossible.

At worse, God does not exist, at best that any possible God is not creator of the rules of the Universe, that the nature and rules of the Universe are naturalistic and beyond any possible God's power to control.

The claims God must exist to explain the existence of the Universe collapses of its own internal self contradictions.

yep because again a creator himself needs to have a creator so on and so fourth. Well we all know where all religions come from anyways.

[Cheerful Charlie]

There is a problem with a god that creates the rules. God is defined as perfectly good. God has a good nature and free will. God does no evil of his own free will.

A perfectly good God would eliminate all moral evil if possible. So such a God would create mankind with a god-like free will and a god-like good nature. Any reason we might imagine why this cannot be so is dead on arrival because God makes the rules and his will cannot be thwarted.
.....

The claims God must exist to explain the existence of the Universe collapses of its own internal self contradictions.

yep because again a creator himself needs to have a creator so on and so fourth. Well we all know where all religions come from anyways.

Well, not necessarily. What this proves is logically naturalism is the basic reason the Universe exists. But this naturalism may well have always existed in some form or the other with no creator. Any possible Gods likewise may not need a creator, a weak proposition to be sure. Or alternatively maybe God is not good, or doesn't care about us, which abandons major revelations of Christianity, Judaism, Islam et al. There are a lot of propositions could be made here, but naturalism any way you want to argue this a God that is all good, cares about us and makes the rules and laws of the Universe is self contradictory.

The question is, what would a die-hard theist say when confronted with this logical problem.

The other thing to notice is this claim, that there is a perfectly good God who cares about us and who makes the very logic of the Universe eliminates the usual arguments that maybe God has very good but unknown and unknowable reasons for having to except the existence of moral evil.

[The Valkyrie]

Imagine an alternative universe where nothing at all exists. Not even space or time.

Now, imagine that there is a god existing alone in this universe.

Where did this god come from?

[dyresand]

Imagine an alternative universe where nothing at all exists. Not even space or time.

Now, imagine that there is a god existing alone in this universe.

Where did this god come from?

Well isn't that contradictory?

[The Valkyrie]

Imagine an alternative universe where nothing at all exists. Not even space or time.

Now, imagine that there is a god existing alone in this universe.

Where did this god come from?

Well isn't that contradictory?

That's religion for you in a nutshell.

[SteveII]

Bob96, I have a question. Is your argument that the universe has a cause and/or that the best explanation of the cause is God? Arguments about Jesus, morality or evolution don't seem to apply to this thread. Just a suggestion, keep to your topic or the conversation gets unwieldy and it is difficult to make a point when everyone goes pursues their favorite objection to Christianity.

@Beccs Arguments like what caused God creates an infinite regression. Within the definition of God is the property of aseity. God just is or we would not be talking about God.

Regarding the initial topic, can someone give me an answer why the popular Kalam cosmological argument does not prevail--that the universe has a cause (leaving God out of if for now). Hawkings seems to need to change the definition of time and quantum theories all seem to have the same problem: quantum fields etc. are not "nothing" and therefore need a cause.

[robvalue]

It is not established that everything needs a cause. It's just not something that can be stated so simply. It is also an amazingly overly simplistic way of trying to sum up amazingly complex quantum mechanics that even now we are only just getting a handle on.

Even if it was true, it's special pleading to exclude what you want to prove from your own rule. You have refuted yourself in doing so.

The argument fails hard, of course, because even if it works it gets you to "something". Not God. And even if it did get you to God, whatever the hell that is, it doesn't get you to "God in my favourite book". It's a terrible argument from start to finish.

[Cheerful Charlie]

Bob96, I have a question. Is your argument that the universe has a cause and/or that the best explanation of the cause is God? Arguments about Jesus, morality or evolution don't seem to apply to this thread. Just a suggestion, keep to your topic or the conversation gets unwieldy and it is difficult to make a point when everyone goes pursues their favorite objection to Christianity.

@Beccs Arguments like what caused God creates an infinite regression. Within the definition of God is the property of aseity. God just is or we would not be talking about God.

Regarding the initial topic, can someone give me an answer why the popular Kalam cosmological argument does not prevail--that the universe has a cause (leaving God out of if for now). Hawkings seems to need to change the definition of time and quantum theories all seem to have the same problem: quantum fields etc. are not "nothing" and therefore need a cause.

There is a subtlety to the Kalam proof most miss, there are two sets of rules, one for God, another for the natural world. In the natural world, all things are contingent, they must have a beginning and a creator. Bit God is a supernatural being that operates with separate rules. God is defined as not contingent.

Kalam type arguments assume there must be a basic foundation that all other things rely on for there contingent existence. But there is no reason that must be so, there may well be an infinite chain of contingency, cause and effect with no entity being eternal and foundational.

Its a case of argument by definition. There is no reason to accept theology's definitions as logically necessary nor proven. The Universe may well be the result of some basic material, and a few rules such as we see in Conway's Game of Life. See Stephan Wolfram et al for more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton

As Andrew Ilachinski points out in his Cellular Automata, many scholars have raised the question of whether the universe is a cellular automaton.[68] Ilachinski argues that the importance of this question may be better appreciated with a simple observation, which can be stated as follows. Consider the evolution of rule 110: if it were some kind of "alien physics", what would be a reasonable description of the observed patterns?[69] If an observer did not know how the images were generated, that observer might end up conjecturing about the movement of some particle-like objects. Indeed, physicist James Crutchfield has constructed a rigorous mathematical theory out of this idea, proving the statistical emergence of "particles" from cellular automata.[70] Then, as the argument goes, one might wonder if our world, which is currently well described by physics with particle-like objects, could be a CA at its most fundamental level.

There are other possible ways to approach things other than a supernatural God