(December 4, 2018 at 3:55 am)Belaqua Wrote:(December 4, 2018 at 2:33 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: But that argument fails because then God also needs a cause and if God "doesn't need a cause" -as theists insist- then there is no reason to think universe didn't need a cause, so there you go DEBUNKED.
If someone were to claim that "everything needs a cause," then your objection here would make sense. It's likely that some people who don't understand the real First Cause argument would foolishly claim such a thing.
Sure, they might be slightly different but they both arise from some of the same assumptions and suffer from some of the same weaknesses, although there are also some unique aspects of each. Most fundamentally, both operate from the premise that the universe, the totality of existence, needs an explanation. This is stipulated, not demonstrated. It may be that the universe merely is and makes the explanation of any particular thing possible and interesting.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
