RE: God Exists
June 1, 2020 at 11:59 am
(This post was last modified: June 1, 2020 at 12:41 pm by Mister Agenda.)
(May 31, 2020 at 2:19 am)brokenreflector Wrote:(May 31, 2020 at 2:05 am)arewethereyet Wrote: New guy - BrokenRecord - leads with William Lane Craig.
Surely many will be converted.
What's wrong with William Lane Craig? And why hasn't anyone in this thread been able to cogently defend atheism?
You made claims. Those are what need to be defended. Atheism is merely not believing any God or gods are actually real. Theism is merely believing at least one God or god is actually real. They make no claims except about what we do or don't believe.
(May 31, 2020 at 12:21 pm)brokenreflector Wrote:(May 31, 2020 at 4:05 am)Grandizer Wrote: Then why assume there was anything other than material before the universe ?
Because we're talking about all physicality. A physical reality producing all physical reality is a logical contradiction.
Some form of physical reality having always existed is not, though. If existence (rather than just this iteration of a cosmos) has a beginning, and time began at that same beginning (as seems to be the case for our cosmos), then physical reality always existed, since time has no meaning 'before' the beginning of time unless there's a larger cosmos with its own time that this one sprang from.
(May 30, 2020 at 11:40 pm)brokenreflector Wrote: By God I mean a necessary, non-physical, and personal being who created all things: seen, unseen, discovered, and undiscovered. Being a Christian, I believe God is more than that, but this post is about the general concept of God.
Ask yourself this question: What are the plausible explanations for the origin of all things? It seems to me that we're left with the following explanations:
First explanation. Ultimately, nonbeing produced being. The problem with this explanation should be obvious. How could nonbeing produce being? What would be producing it? Nonbeing is the absence of any kind of existence.
Second explanation. Something is past-eternal. This something could be the universe, multiverse, or one of its constituents. Or it could be something else entirely. Let's call it X. X would need to exist and there was never a point where the proposition "X exists" was false.
By nonbeing you seem to mean absolute nothingness; no matter, no energy, no space, no time. Such a state of affairs doesn't seem plausible, at least not for long, there being no time. So the second explanation seems sounder, based purely on intuition.
(May 30, 2020 at 11:40 pm)brokenreflector Wrote: The second explanation gets rid of the problem of nonbeing producing being and there doesn't seem to be any glaring issue with it. Issues arise only if you're an atheist. Put simply, atheists do not believe that God exists. There are many flavors of atheism and ways that people spin the word, but this is what it really comes down to. If an atheist chooses to accept the second explanation, then they're forced to believe that something eternal exists, but it's not God. Typically, atheists who choose this second explanation will believe that the universe or multiverse is eternal. But the idea that the universe is eternal is logically incoherent and not to mention against what contemporary scientific evidence suggests. For the latter, I refer you to a certain point of a debate between philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig and physicist Dr. Lawrence Krauss (https://youtu.be/mj4nbL53I-E?t=5408). Despite being a staunch and vocal atheist, Dr. Krauss begrudgingly admits in this YouTube clip that contemporary scientific evidence points to the universe being past-finite.
This cosmos is past-finite, yet it has also existed since time began. If anything 'preceded' it, that thing existed in its own spacetime continuum.
(May 30, 2020 at 11:40 pm)brokenreflector Wrote: Going back to the logical problem with the second explanation, the incoherence stems from the implications of an eternal universe. If the universe is indeed eternal, then that means our universe has already been through an actually infinite number of changes or processes, all leading up to the present. Otherwise, the present wouldn't be occurring. But how did an infinite amount of changes already transpire? The fact that these changes were traversed seems to suggest that they're finite rather than infinite. This seems to be a big problem for the atheist.
I argue that in order for the second explanation to work, God must be the eternal cause. This is because God doesn't go through changes. He's not made up of parts or processes. He's non-physical or immaterial. Therefore, God being past-eternal doesn't lead to the same implausible implication that an actually infinite number of changes has already transpired.
God doesn't have to change for an infinite past to be a problem. Merely existing brings in all the same objections. How long did God wait in the infinite past before creating the universe? Infinitely long, by definition; so God would never reach the time when God created the universe. Alternatively, past-infinite may not be the problem we think it is, similar to the way that the Fletcher's Paradox doesn't prevent the arrow from actually reaching the target. However infinite the past, there must be a 'now'.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.