(February 20, 2016 at 10:31 am)bennyboy Wrote:(February 20, 2016 at 4:35 am)Harris Wrote: Because infinite regression is an impossibility because it simply ends into nothingness therefore the explanation of the existence is the uncaused cause that is God.
God is also an impossibility, by your own definition. You are saying that a thing exists which was never created-- and yet your reason for positing this being is exactly that nothing can exist without being created.
Not only is God a poor solution to your "problem" of infinite regress, your definitions make God unnecessary. SOMETHING, it turns out, CAN exist without being created, according to you-- therefore no problem exists, and no solution is necessary.
Let me begin from the pervasive assumption that existence is an uncaused, spontaneous process. However, this assumption is not providing any support to the idea of “no god” rather it creates ambiguity in the intuitive and regular streams of ideas by pushing them away from the regular flow of natural processes on which they are established.
“To Suggest that things could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing is to quit doing serious metaphysics and to resort to magic. Second, if things really could come into being uncaused out of nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything does not come into existence from nothing then why do bicycles and Beethoven and root beer not pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? ...
... the most successful ontological commitment that was a guiding line of research since Epicurus and Lucretius is the principle out of nothing nothing comes which is a metaphysical hypothesis that has proved so fruitful in every corner of science that we are surely well advised to try as hard as we can to eschew processes of absolute origin.”
Page 344
Does Physical Cosmology Transcend the Limits of Naturalistic Reasoning?
In Studies on Mario Bung's "Treatise," ed. P. Weingartner and G. J. W. Dorn (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990)
Bernulf Kanitscheider
Metaphysically, it is counterintuitive to assume that something can come into being out of nothing.
Given that the universe has a beginning that means it must therefore have had a cause; it could not have popped into existence uncaused and the cause of the universe would have to have certain important properties. Nothing which is the result of causes can have its existence inherent in itself. There are no uncaused events and all caused events are contingent to just one necessary substance, upon which all contingent things depend. If something were inherently existent it would be permanently (that is, necessarily) existent.
Based on this I have developed these premises:
1. Everything in the universe is a created being
2. Universe is a created being
3. Every created being is a contingent being
4. Universe is a contingent being
5. If universe does not depend on God then whatever it depends upon is God
In the case of God, who is necessarily uncaused, only his intrinsic nature can provide this explanation.
Logically necessary property can be exemplified as when mathematicians prove that there exist numbers with certain properties which in fact helps us in understanding the identity, order, and harmony. However, the concept of number is a concept of pure logic; and that numbers themselves are logical objects.
Whole of our conceptual world is in fact the outcome of idea of the uncaused cause which act as the benchmark for all new ideas because it provides an ideal environment for the beginning and to flourishing any concept. The efforts to develop concepts without having an uncaused cause is similar to doing math without numbers or building a concept into nothingness.
