(October 8, 2018 at 2:27 pm)SteveII Wrote:
(October 8, 2018 at 12:02 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote:
1) Not me, per se -- Biblical scholars. I personally prefer Bart Ehrman's detective work which concludes that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, based on a careful study of the Gospels.
https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Apocalyptic...art+ehrman
2) Billions of people can and do misinterpret their personal experiences, as psychology has shown.
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla...le+gorilla
3 and 4) You are assuming that the universe came from nothing, which even the big bang theory does not assume. The universe, in some form, may have existed forever. After all, energy doesn't seem to be either created or destroyed, just transformed. We don't really know yet, but your jumping to conclusions proves nothing. Further, other scientists have speculated how it is indeed possible for something to come from nothing (without anything supernatural involved).
https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-...e+big+bang
5) Consciousness is not a separate being, it is a process of physical bodies and specifically physical brains. It varies with brain chemistry and structure.
https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Sci...sciousness
So yes, there are alternative explanations for each of your points, and from my perspective every one is more probable than yours because they do no depend on the existence of a whole other spiritual or supernatural dimension to reality. The more moving parts any explanation requires, the less probable it's likely to be. Your explanations are way too complicated for what they are required to explain.
I am happy to discuss each point with you in as much detail as you like. However, I am not going to have dueling Amazon book links. Pick one and give me the basics.
I'll start on the one you did actually expand on. The reason there must be a first cause is that a infinite amount of past causes/effects is not logically possible. There is no such possibility as an actual infinite number of anything in the real world. If there were an infinite number of past events, we could never have gotten to the events of today because there would still need to be an infinite amount of events that need to pass before we can get to today.
No scientist has ever had a theory where things come into being ex nihilo.
Moving the goalposts fallacy. You only asked for me to show there were indeed alternative explanations. I have done so, whether you investigate them on your own or not. Plus I already offered short summaries.
With quantum mechanics, scientists have already shown that the physical world can behave in non-intuitive ways. So neither of your arguments, against infinities and against ex nihilo creation, may be correct in reality.