Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[genkaus]

If they had been different, there wouldn't be any life. That's the point. Does this mean there could be no spiritual life? No, but certainly no life in a material Universe.

How do you know that? All you can say is that there wouldn't be any life as we know it. That does not mean that there wouldn't be a life at all.

I didn't say any configuration would have sufficed, I said that God could have created it any way He wanted; it doesn't mean any of those configurations would have led to life.

Why not?

You don't know that, not that it is even relevant to the point.

Yes, I do. And how is the question of time irrelevant to the question if eternity.

Sorry, try again. An efficient cause is external to the thing it is causing. Even if it were possible that the Universe could be its own efficient cause, it would still mean the Universe had a beginning which defeats your argument, if you had one and hadn't simply descended into incoherency. I'll let Thomas explain it:

"In the world that we sense, we find that efficient causes come in series. We do not, and cannot, find that something is its own efficient cause — for, if something were its own efficient cause, it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. But the series of efficient causes cannot possibly go back to infinity. In all such series of causes, a first thing causes one or more intermediaries, and the intermediaries cause the last thing; when a cause is taken out of this series, so is its effect. Therefore, if there were no first efficient cause, there would be no last or intermediary efficient causes. If the series of efficient causes went back to infinity, however, there would be no first efficient cause and, hence, no last or intermediary causes. But there obviously are such causes. We must therefore posit a first efficient cause, which everyone understands to be God."

Read again, you moron. I did not say that the universe was its own cause. I said that the universe was causeless and therefore the efficient cause of everything within it. The universe is causeless, beginning-less and eternal and that is why it is the efficient cause of everything else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity

"While in the popular mind, eternity (or foreverness) often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast, something sempiternal exists throughout an infinite time. Sempiternity is also known as everlastingness."

Do you understand that we're talking about metaphysics?

e·ter·ni·ty (-tûrn-t)
n. pl. e·ter·ni·ties
1. Time without beginning or end; infinite time.
2. The state or quality of being eternal.
3.
a. The timeless state following death.
b. The afterlife; immortality.
4. A very long or seemingly endless time: waited in the dentist's office for an eternity.

It seems that theists have hijacked the common definition for the very specific application.

There aren't any actual infinities, that's the point. So, going back to your original misunderstanding of potential infinities, positing a potentially infinite past, means it is at every point finite as it is streaming into infinity backwards, which means the number of events between the past and present is at every point finite, which means the past had a beginning. It also contradicts temporal becoming. I'd appreciate it if you would do some research on this.

Yes, there are actual infinities. You simply cannot know for certain.

As to your argument: positing an infinite past, we have a finite number of events between a point in the past and a point in present, but events can still stream backwards. Which means the past had no beginning.