RE: Can anyone provide an argument for a necessary being?
April 22, 2014 at 9:13 am
(This post was last modified: April 22, 2014 at 10:10 am by Metalogos.)
What you are asking is "if it's not god, then what is it?" But if you have no evidence for god, then it's dishonest to assume that god should be the default explanation for questions of the origins of the universe. Especially since we know that humans have, for as long as we can tell, assigned "god" as an explanation for anything that they didn't understand at the time. And when they did gain an understanding, "god" was never the answer. Why would we accept "god" (or any such supernatural explanation) in this case?
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Thank you for engaging me intelligently, Tonus.
Yes, you are right in a way by restating my challenge for an alternative answer the way you have although I didn't and probably wouldn't use the word god in such a question. It is a word that is filled with too much controversy and too many assumptions so I try to avoid it whenever possible.
I have nothing to hide so I don't get your reasoning for calling me dishonest when I attempt to take a theist approach to the question of origin. It is not my default answer because I have been through the rejection phase of all things religious many years past and indeed have had to forfeit a number of important things like jobs and relationships because of my lack of an orthodox christian belief system. I have been contemplating these kinds of ideas for decades and probably will for decades more, assuming I survive that long. I am completely open in my thinking and so there are no dogmas that I need to defend. Having a theistic position does not force one to take a religious position. It is not dishonest to posit an agent, say, a prime mover, as a plausible first cause for a universe that is obviously governed by the laws of cause and effect. That is all that I am doing and nothing else.
As for the statement that you made about people in the past attempting to explain anything they didn't or couldn't understand by attributing it all to a god or God but then discarding that devise as soon as they had a better explanation, yes, such things did and still probably do occur continuously. I do beg to differ with you though when you say that "god was never the answer" after gaining more scientific, more rational explanations because there are any number of scientist or scholars of past and present who did not discard their theistic views even after gaining new and perhaps improved knowledge and understanding of the many intricate workings of the universe. Certainly there are countless cases of people who did discard their faiths and abandoned their philosophical positions but it was not everyone and so it is not true that a god or God ceased to be important to all people of past or present who receive better information than they previously possessed. I will cede to you though that those individuals who hold ideas or belief systems that are based on the opinions or positions of others rather than having been worked out and formulated through rigorous thinking and critical questioning will be the first to abandon those ideas and beliefs in the face of a superior argument.
Finally, you ask why should we (do you mean atheists here?) accept god as an explanation in this case (do you mean the case of origin here?) and I would reply that it is just in this case when we are discussing the origin of the universe that a theistic approach to the question "What gave existence to the universe?" is a plausible and even perhaps a preferable position to take. This position adequately addresses the problem of the necessity of a first mover that is unmoved itself. The alternative position is the one Democritus took when he said that there always was motion in the universe and there always will be motion. This view has an underlying assumption that matter has always existed and always will exist. I guess I look at the information available to me concerning the history of the cosmos and see that everything seems to have a beginning and an end. The universe is not static. It is not eternal. There seems to have been a beginning to it all. We call that the Big Bang. If things have a beginning then they have an end. How things really began and how things will really end is pure speculation at this point in time. But the universe is not the static, eternal place that many of our predecessors believed it to be. Can I prove irrefutably that a prime mover is responsible for setting the universe into motion? No! Can you prove irrefutably that such an agent in not responsible for setting the universe into motion? No! If your position is similar to that of Democritus, then we are left to ask which position is most satisfying. Of course that answer will be subjective and so perhaps it is best left unasked but nonetheless people do tend to fall into one position or the other.
Thank you for your consideration and patience.
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Thank you for engaging me intelligently, Tonus.
Yes, you are right in a way by restating my challenge for an alternative answer the way you have although I didn't and probably wouldn't use the word god in such a question. It is a word that is filled with too much controversy and too many assumptions so I try to avoid it whenever possible.
I have nothing to hide so I don't get your reasoning for calling me dishonest when I attempt to take a theist approach to the question of origin. It is not my default answer because I have been through the rejection phase of all things religious many years past and indeed have had to forfeit a number of important things like jobs and relationships because of my lack of an orthodox christian belief system. I have been contemplating these kinds of ideas for decades and probably will for decades more, assuming I survive that long. I am completely open in my thinking and so there are no dogmas that I need to defend. Having a theistic position does not force one to take a religious position. It is not dishonest to posit an agent, say, a prime mover, as a plausible first cause for a universe that is obviously governed by the laws of cause and effect. That is all that I am doing and nothing else.
As for the statement that you made about people in the past attempting to explain anything they didn't or couldn't understand by attributing it all to a god or God but then discarding that devise as soon as they had a better explanation, yes, such things did and still probably do occur continuously. I do beg to differ with you though when you say that "god was never the answer" after gaining more scientific, more rational explanations because there are any number of scientist or scholars of past and present who did not discard their theistic views even after gaining new and perhaps improved knowledge and understanding of the many intricate workings of the universe. Certainly there are countless cases of people who did discard their faiths and abandoned their philosophical positions but it was not everyone and so it is not true that a god or God ceased to be important to all people of past or present who receive better information than they previously possessed. I will cede to you though that those individuals who hold ideas or belief systems that are based on the opinions or positions of others rather than having been worked out and formulated through rigorous thinking and critical questioning will be the first to abandon those ideas and beliefs in the face of a superior argument.
Finally, you ask why should we (do you mean atheists here?) accept god as an explanation in this case (do you mean the case of origin here?) and I would reply that it is just in this case when we are discussing the origin of the universe that a theistic approach to the question "What gave existence to the universe?" is a plausible and even perhaps a preferable position to take. This position adequately addresses the problem of the necessity of a first mover that is unmoved itself. The alternative position is the one Democritus took when he said that there always was motion in the universe and there always will be motion. This view has an underlying assumption that matter has always existed and always will exist. I guess I look at the information available to me concerning the history of the cosmos and see that everything seems to have a beginning and an end. The universe is not static. It is not eternal. There seems to have been a beginning to it all. We call that the Big Bang. If things have a beginning then they have an end. How things really began and how things will really end is pure speculation at this point in time. But the universe is not the static, eternal place that many of our predecessors believed it to be. Can I prove irrefutably that a prime mover is responsible for setting the universe into motion? No! Can you prove irrefutably that such an agent in not responsible for setting the universe into motion? No! If your position is similar to that of Democritus, then we are left to ask which position is most satisfying. Of course that answer will be subjective and so perhaps it is best left unasked but nonetheless people do tend to fall into one position or the other.
Thank you for your consideration and patience.
