(April 20, 2014 at 6:56 am)Metalogos Wrote: I guess I would answer your question with the Prime Mover or Unmoved Mover argument that was formalized by Aristotle in Book 12 of his Metaphysics and later used by Thomas Aquinas in his famous Five Proofs of God in his most well-known work Summa Theologica.
While I am not religious in any way, and while I find many of Aristotole's arguments impossible to accept, I do find it quite acceptable to concede that it is very difficult to imagine or posit an argument that doesn't attribute some kind of Prime Mover as the origin of the universe. I guess I find it easier to understand that all matter has not been in existence forever with no beginning rather than the obverse. Everything we see in the natural world has a beginning and an end. So it just makes more sense to me, logically, that there must be some ultimate cause for existence and though I certainly don't think human intelligence is even close to a cognition of what that ultimate cause was or is, I can understand why people throughout the ages have tried to identify it.
Finally, I would ask the questioner to give a proof or argument that supports the position that the universe could exist and indeed does exist without an initial cause or Prime Mover. In other words, what is the plausible, natural explanation for the existence of the universe that you seem to refer to? If it is the singularity posited by the Big Bang theory, I would simply ask 'From whence came the singularity?' Be it known that I can accept an argument that would posit that the singularity and the Prime Mover are one in the same. In fact, based on the law of conservation of matter, I would argue that this is indeed a very plausible explanation for the known universe, I.e, God is the universe and the universe is God, or Dog or Mog or Gom or whatever name you want to attach to the Prime Mover.
IMO the common mistake is that far too many people think that everything that exists today has always existed in its current form. Matter evolves from the simple to the complex. It's a never ending process and matter is still being created that is more complex. The process takes a very long time so we can't observe it in its entirety.
Consider how cosmic hydrogen gas collects itself into a massive ball and then goes nuclear and burns for billions of years, creating new elements within itself over time. Then the star goes through several evolutions, changing from one type into another, each with different characteristics. Is a god entity behind that or is it simply a common natural process?
