First order logic, set theory and God

[Angrboda]

I also think the questions asserted about the necessary temporal relationships involved have merit, depending on the specific objection. P1 necessarily asserts that for any two things, X1 and X2, if X1 is the cause of X2, then X1 precedes the existence of X2, except in the case in which X2 is self caused, in which case there is no temporal relationship. This gets tricky because it's possible that the universe is caused, but there is no temporally prior existence. The validity of that objection is debatable. The more serious objection was Hawking-Hartle which shows that these necessary temporal relationships simply do not hold in all cases, furnishing a third option to P1, which then fails due to a misapplication of the law of the excluded middle. But there's an even more problematic concern, given the temporal relationships. God, according to contemporary theology, does not exist in time before the universe exists, and indeed did and in some sense continues to exist in a timeless state. This is a problem for P1 because the temporal relationship must be there or else the whole idea of one thing causing another thing is incoherent. I don't think that's a problem for a thing causing itself. Given that this temporal relation must hold, and God's existence prior to the universe existence is atemporal, P1 effectively rules out the god of contemporary theology because the temporal relation necessary to make causality coherent in P1 does not hold. So, either this proof doesn't work for proving that God and must be referencing an entity with different properties from that God, or it doesn't prove anything at all. I've developed an independent proof of the non-existence of God which employs similar necessary relationships to show that the God of contemporary theology cannot exist. Actually, that's a little strong. What my argument does show is that either God does not exist, or cosmological arguments, like this one, do not hold. Either accomplishes what I need to accomplish in order to dismiss such proofs.

If he [God] existed and the universe did not, then that moment and that of creation are two moments, and he exists in time (Craig, 2002). If he existed in time, and is a necessary being -- has always existed -- then he couldn't have created the universe, as that would have required the traversal of an actual infinite, which is impossible (Craig, 2007). If he existed and created simultaneously, then he also exists in time, as simultaneity is a temporal relation. In that case he did not create the universe because a cause must precede its effect. So, your God did not create the universe in either case. As this exhausts the potential cases, your God did not create the universe. Since God is by definition the creator of the universe, your God does not exist.

It isn't noted in the above, but any attempt to place God prior to the two moments of time which exists if God exists and the universe does not simply adds additional moments of time, via a similar principle to mathematical induction. So objecting to that part of the above does not succeed as it can be extended infinitely via that induction. I'm too lazy to verify it at the moment, but I think that my above argument meets all three of Hatcher's principles, and would therefore count as an anti-proof of the original argument. Of course, I've already pointed out how the three principles lead to an infinite regress, this just shows that point more explicitly. Any counter-argument has to defeat the mathematical induction in the above argument, or else an infinite regress is a necessary consequence.