The Best Logique Evidence of God Existence

[LadyForCamus]

I keep coming back to the same problem in my mind. Aristotelian thinking seems to insinuate that existence is in some way separate, or beyond, or ontologically different from that which exists; that existence can somehow be “prior” to things existing. I feel like that’s unnecessary. It’s a tautology. Existence is simply a state of being. The cosmos exist. Earth exists. This pencil exists. I’ve asked this before, but I’d like to address the question again: do you think that there is a good reason why we shouldn’t accept existence as a brute fact?  Is there a good reason to believe that “the cosmos” and “existence” can’t be synonymous terms?

I don't think Aristotle makes that separation. (I wish I spoke Greek so I could look at his grammar.) It is a brute fact that stuff exists. It is logically incoherent to talk about a state of absolute nothingness.

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.

Therefore, the brute fact of stuff existing is the First Cause. It is the deepest foundation of talking about all the various stuff. 

So people may say that the First Cause is the Ground of Being, or existence, or -- in an attempt to be more careful -- the unavoidability of stuff being around. When we say that, for example, the continued existence of space-time depends for its continuation on the brute fact that there has to be stuff, we have come to the necessary end of the chain. Which makes it the First Cause.

But, if things exist necessarily; if existence is not contingent on any other pre-condition; if stuff exists simply because there is no alternative, why call it a “cause” at all? My understanding of the way most theists utilize this argument is to say that there has to be some uncaused thing that caused stuff to exist, and that thing is god. God, in this commonly presented version of the argument, is entirely separate and categorically different from the reality it caused to exist. 

The word "prior" is misleading because we are so used to using it in a temporal sense. But in logic, it just means X has to be the case for Y to be the case. Or in the present discussion, there has to be stuff in order for there to be hydrogen. The fact that there is stuff isn't a "cause" in the modern English sense of an act or event which made something else come about.

Right. That’s what I was getting at above. So, if this is the correct philosophical  interpretation of first cause arguments, then I can’t see why theists think it’s an argument for god.

Whether all this is true -- that existence is inevitable and nothingness is nonsense -- I can't say. But in terms of a First Cause, it is part of the old argument.

This would make for a great thread in the philosophy sub forum!

*ducks as the philosophy-haters throw tomatoes*