(December 7, 2015 at 11:54 am)orangebox21 Wrote:(December 6, 2015 at 9:22 am)Crossless1 Wrote: Yes, but the problem with that answer is that step 2 in the chain of reasoning doesn't take into account that we can only say with confidence that the universe in its present observable state came into being at a certain time, which does not necessarily imply creation from "nothing". A singularity, after all, is not nothing. We simply don't have the tools or conceptual framework to describe what the state of the universe was "prior" to the Big Bang. But that doesn't justify the leap to an intelligent creator outside space/time acting as an eternally existing first cause, a.k.a. "God". Any honest answer to the question "what caused the universe" must end with an admission of ignorance. Theists who invoke the cosmological argument wish to give the impression that they have answered the question, when all they have really done is given a sort of name to their ignorance as if that answers anything.I'm not defending the cosmological argument as a whole, just the question of why or why not God would require a creator.
Whether "God" does or does not require a creator is just a question of word play. Since we don't have a good shred of evidence that such a being exists, the "answer" comes down to how it is fancifully defined and whether all persons in the conversation subscribe to the same language game. Nothing more, nothing less.
