Proving God in 20 statements

[smfortune]

"I know! I'll dress up the First Cause argument using a lot of text and a bunch of math, then accuse anyone who doesn't agree with me of not reading it or not understanding it! THAT'LL show those ATHEISTS!"


  Yeah, no, I read the whole thing, and it's still bullshit. All you're trying to do is argue/define your god into existence, and it looks like you're making some leaps that don't seem to be supported at all. Presuming the Universe is finite, there's no reason to believe it would take an infinite energy source to generate it. It might take a vast energy source, but I see no evidence here for the assertion that it would have to be infinite.



Furthermore, trying to worm your way into being able to say that "God caused God" doesn't stop your argument from being fallacious and ill-formed; in fact, it doesn't even stop it from being special pleading. If you're positing that God caused God, then you're allowing for the possibility that things can cause themselves, meaning the Universe could have caused itself. If God is the only thing that can cause itself, then you're back to special pleading.


If you're positing a First Cause that is outside space-time, I'd love to know how you know anything about this Cause at all, or how you present evidence for any of the assertions you've made about it. Before you reach for your Bible, remember that the Bible was written by humans whose scientific knowledge would be dwarfed by the average middle schooler. Unless you have some evidence to support the assertion that they would be able to know things from outside space-time, their writings are essentially useless in proving anything (especially since they're technically the claim, and you can't use a claim to prove itself because that's circular).

Within the premises of the proof, anything could be self causing. Your computer, your cat, the car down the street, the Universe, anything. In fact, the proof begins by examining the hypothesis of self-causation of the Universe but ultimately rejects that as an explanation because of the implications of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Also, importantly, the proof does not presume an external cause. In fact, the proof is led there (not assumed there) by Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem after the rejection of an internal cause. Due to the implications of the Theorem, the explanation of the Universe must be infinitely great,...God by any other definition. In addition, God is not a violation of any premise of the proof as God can himself be seen as caused, though self-causing - again, not ruled out by the premises. The reality is that your criticisms are in fact, a sharp highlight of the soundness of the premises. But furthermore, your point about energy is misplaced. We are discussing explanations of the Universe not energy - which is a derived mechanism. It's more appropriate to think about this in terms of laws (which then act on or produce energy).

How do I know about anything outside of space-time? The Bible? Lol. Not really. The evidence is literally in the implication of Gödel's Theorem itself. The being (or whatever you want to call it) is necessarily infinitely great to suffice completeness and consistency.

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The entire premise in this thread summed up:

You're referring to the problem of evil. There are many, many theodices that explain why an all good, all powerful God would allow evil. The agent theory of free will is the one I most subscribe to.

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Edited to repair quote formatting -- Stimbo