Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[brotherlylove]

You keep saying "If the universe had a beginning... ". Stop right there, it didn't. At least not from scratch.

What I say is that while the universe as we know it had a beginning, it certainly did not come from nothing. Think about how much energy and the laws of the universe evolved in just the first few micro seconds of the big bang. It is not known that the singularity which gave rise to the big bang popped into being out of nothingness. I suspect a limitless regression of prior states of something which eventually gave rise to the universe as we know it today.

The universe is, in that sense, eternal but your god is not. You have defined him as such and have found him ever so handy for explaining every vexing question. But that doesn't mean you're correct.

So you're talking about an infinite regress of causes, but what we know from infinite set theory is that infinite numbers of things don't exist in reality. A classic example is Hilberts Hotel. Let's say you have a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, and every room has a guest, so it's full. Yet, even though it is full you can have infinitely many new guests, because when you have a new guest come by, you can simply have the guest in room 1 move to room 2 and the guest in room 2 move to room 4 and so on. This shows the impossibility of an occurrence of an infinite series. There must be an uncaused cause to begin the series.

So we have this on your authority? You xtians are the ones making Him up so I suppose you should be able to define him as you like. But if you want to base any argument on the fact that god is eternal then you're just being circular. God is an eternal being? You're sure about this .. how? DON"T QUOTE SCRIPTURES!!! They mean even less than what you've been saying and I won't read them anyway.

If an eternal universe is unimaginable to you then you don't get to assume an eternal being who pulls universes out of his hat. Or if you do, you're just being silly and we will all have to laugh at you some more.

1 The universe was brought into being either by a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions or by a personal, free agent.

2 The universe could not have been brought into being by a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions.

3 Therefore, the universe was brought into being by a personal, free agent.

In cause and effect relationships, and if the cause is a timeless state, but the effect is in time, this does not mesh, because the state that created the effect needs to have the state as its effect. Essentially, that the problem for your naturalistic explanation is that there is nothing to set the dominoes up or get them going. This makes a free agent more likely than the mechanistic process you believe happened.