God's God

[Esquilax]

I think existence seems to be an an effect. It appears to me in the same way as motion appears to you to be an effect. What you said about not understanding can be the same about things in nature. We can possibly not understand black-holes. It doesn't mean they don't have a cause or we can't know they do have a cause.

Unless you're infallible, what things seem like to you is an irrelevancy. It could simply be that you're lacking key pieces of information- unknown unknowns, if you like- that could radically change the way we must approach this question. Making concrete statements right now is pointless.

Think about existence. It's perpetually existing. Why is that constantly not caused, but everything else seems like that? Perhaps it's due to "Atheism" glasses, where everything we know that can possibly point to a Creator is assumed to be assumptions from ignorance.

Well, except that the atheist position generally says nothing about creators in general, just that specific religious ones haven't met their burden of proof. I'm entirely willing to accept that there may be a creator, just that as yet, religions haven't satisfied me that it's theirs.

Well it's more then that. I'm not saying to claim to know for sure, but it sure seems that way.

The earth once seemed flat. Things aren't always as they seem, especially when we're talking about concepts bigger than our perspective will usually allow.

This calls for being agnostic, but not sitting on the other side of fence where it seems most likely a Creator doesn't exist from atheist stand point.

Agnostic and atheist aren't mutually exclusive terms.The former addresses what you claim to know, the latter what you claim to believe. Besides, atheism isn't a stance on creators, it's a stance on religion: not "there's probably no creator," but "your specific religious creator does not seem likely."

How do you know that? Every axiom that proves the Creator seems to be we can't be sure of at the end. I am not certain, but I don't claim no one else can be certain in something that seems true to me.

How do I know that you don't know for certain if everything requires a creator? Because you're not omnipotent. There's things you don't know, and much of the universe falls under that category. It's nothing to feel bad about, but it is the truth; we as a species could be missing some immense, vital part of the puzzle.

Does it seem true to you or not? That's the question. Then we can ask why does it seem like that. And perhaps we will become less certain or close to certain or even certain.

Accepting things as they seem is intellectual laziness; lots of things seem one way but are actually another. That's what science is for, to cut through what seems intuitively to be true into what is actually true.

Why give up on certainty?

You can't give up what you never had.

It doesn't specify the type of Creator I agree, but it does imply a supernatural constant cause to the universe.

Not necessarily. Even if it implied a constant cause there's no reason to assume that cause is supernatural; it could just be a feature of the universe our technology can't detect yet. This is the problem with making blanket statements about things we can't possibly know.

In other words, if it's not proven empirically, you don't take side of the fence, that the Creator seems more likely no matter how seemingly true it is?

Is it only empirical evidence that you take seriously?

I take evidence seriously, but since we don't yet have any evidence of what happened before the big bang, I'm taking a sabbatical on answering questions about the beginning of the universe. What's the problem with that?

Then I reasoned why the supernatural immensely powerful being can be causing itself and the universe.

Where is the special pleading?

Because we have no evidence for things causing themselves to exist. You're asking us to accept your conclusion, only it's based on a premise you can't quite prove.

It seems like it's still special pleading. Because it's saying "yes we can know everything requires a cause in general, but we can't know existence requires a cause"....why is this the case?

It's not. That's why I added "as far as we know," before talking about everything requiring a cause.