God and theists.

[Mister Agenda]

I appreciate the discussion. Thanks. 

Likewise.

1a/2. You said "Absolute nothingness is impossible and quantum foam has always (for any meaningful sense of 'always') existed." Neither of these are true. 

I gave one example of a natural explanation of the universe, of which you said there were none. I wasn't claiming it was correct, there is insufficient data to confirm it. All it really has going for it is math that works and being based on evidence rather than working backwards from the conclusion someone wants to be true.

'Nothing' is not a void.

It really feels like I said that already.

'Void' is in relation to something else.  There are no logical problems with this concept and despite Krauss and other's attempt to redefine it, nothing is just simply not anything. Attempting to claim there is no such thing is an obvious attempt to avoid the implications. 

So your response boils down to 'nuh-uh!'

Quantum foam is something physical and as such cannot be past eternal because that is a logical absurdity.

If it's a logical absurdity, it should be possible to prove that it is such, unless it's actually only an intuitional absurdity (like Achilles and the Tortoise). If there were a Nobel Prize for math, I'm sure doing so would earn you one. And while you're at it, show how something being non-physical makes past-infinite no longer an absurdity.

There cannot be an infinite number of successive events stretching off into the past because we would have never arrived at the present. From the other side of this absurd coin, the quantum foam woudl have generated our universe already--an infinite time ago.

It seems paradoxical, like Achilles passing the tortoise...yet he does. And any problem that applies to an infinite past situation applies to God as well. If God exists infinitely into the past, he'll never have gotten to the point where he creates our universe.

And our universe having been previously generated precludes it from being generated again how? With past-infinite quantum foam every possible universe has occurred an infinite number of times. Though I suspect that the solution to the paradox for the quantum foam hypothesis is that the foam itself is timeless, it's the universes that it generates that have time. Quantum foam would be the basic fabric of the multiverse, but not itself part of time and space. During the normal course of events in QF, virtual particles are generated and instantly annihilated, no change to the status quo. When there's a runaway expansion that generates a universe, that is no disturbance of the QF.

I'm not married to the hypothesis, it was just one of several possible examples, but I find it entertaining because QF has most of the properties typically assigned to a bare-bones Creator deity except consciousness and personhood. If it turns out that the universe came from QF, theists will have been right by about 90% of the attributes they claim a creator deity must have.

I never said there was nothing before the universe (or multiverse). There was God. What I said was the universe (or multiverse) --both physical were created from nothing.

I can't help but notice that you chose not to address any of the objections I raised about how problematic 'absolute nothingness' is philosophically, so I don't see any point in raising them again.

All of the best models of the universe can't avoid a beginning.

As rated by the FDA of cosmology? How did they determine to exclude the several cyclic models of the universe? Because, once again, there's a Nobel for the person who can prove they're invalid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model

All of our reason and experience points to anything physical had to have a beginning. Anything that has a beginning has an explanation.

All our reason and experience tells us that we have never observed matter or energy beginning, only transforming. I'm sure there's an explanation for it, less sure that we'll never know. I do know that you claim to know but I think you're simply mistaken.

God, by necessity (in the sense if God exists it could not be any other way) did not have a beginning. There is nothing necessary about anything physical--it is all contingent. 

We don't know if the universe in the larger sense of everything that exists began to exist. There's no evidence that our cosmos hasn't been cycling forever and no objection to that being the case that doesn't also apply to God. Past infinite sucks as a proposition and maybe you should talk to Neo about figuring out a way to have your cake and eat it to. I'm pretty sure he doesn't go with a past-infinite God but a timeless God. Timeless, but able to generate time, like Quantum Foam.

1b. Science cannot help us with anything before space-time. If a theoretical physicist hypothesizes what may have been, it is metaphysics. This is just mater of definitions. 

You're missing the Golden Age of Cosmology.

3. I don't think that is true. The Anthropic Principle is just the conclusion that observations of the universe must be compatible with the observer observing it. It does not follow that the existence of the observer is unremarkable. 

You can remark on anything you want, but the anthropic principle states that we should expect to find conditions that permit our existence. If you choose to be astounded by finding exactly what must be the case if our existence is natural, have at.

Say you have been sentenced to be shot for treason. There are 100 marksmen with loaded guns aimed at your heart. The signal is given and they all fire. Now while it is true that the you should not be surprised that you do not observe you are dead, it is equally true that you should be surprised that you do observe you are alive.

That was not a bad analogy. And it's okay to marvel at the universe. But I would be way more surprised to find myself shot through the heart and alive, and if you had asked me in advance in what way could I still be alive after the order to fire was given I could have told you: everyone missed (perhaps deliberately), or some other eventuality in which me being alive doesn't involve multiple bullets in my heart.  

4. The fact is that most cosmologists (Christian or not) think the universe shows remarkable fine-tuning. 

So if the consensus you perceive changes, you will go along with the majority of cosmologists?

5. That's simply not true.

So a cumulative case, after it being shown that one of the elements it rests on is problematic, is as strong as a case with an otherwise equal amount of support in which none of the elements it rests on is problematic?