RE: A former agnostic, with doubts?
September 17, 2014 at 2:52 am
(This post was last modified: September 17, 2014 at 2:54 am by bennyboy.)
The primary cause doesn't work, because it's a shell game. It goes something like this: the universe exists so it must have been created. But if something created the universe, what created it? Well, we need something that exists without needing to be created-- the prime cause.
This then goes to deism: since whatever caused the universe cannot be OF the universe, it is separate. How could something outside spacetime be responsible for a creative act? The answer is that it cannot be a physical entity, because physical causality requires an established spacetime framework, and must therefore be a spiritual one, aka God.
There are two problems: 1) We don't know that the universe is not eternal, and therefore don't know if it WAS created at all. 2) Creating a philosophical mystery to solve a philosophical mystery is cheating. You are saying, "Let X be that which exists but which never needed to be created, and that X can be the creator of the universe." But if you're cheating, why not just do it at the level of the universe: "The universe exists but never needed to be created." Why invent a new quantity, or worse, a new mythology, when all you're really trying to say is that somewhere, somehow, black is white and up is down?
A simpler solution is: Holy fuck! The universe is full of paradoxes! rather than "Paradoxes are impossible, so let's invent an impossible solution."
This then goes to deism: since whatever caused the universe cannot be OF the universe, it is separate. How could something outside spacetime be responsible for a creative act? The answer is that it cannot be a physical entity, because physical causality requires an established spacetime framework, and must therefore be a spiritual one, aka God.
There are two problems: 1) We don't know that the universe is not eternal, and therefore don't know if it WAS created at all. 2) Creating a philosophical mystery to solve a philosophical mystery is cheating. You are saying, "Let X be that which exists but which never needed to be created, and that X can be the creator of the universe." But if you're cheating, why not just do it at the level of the universe: "The universe exists but never needed to be created." Why invent a new quantity, or worse, a new mythology, when all you're really trying to say is that somewhere, somehow, black is white and up is down?
A simpler solution is: Holy fuck! The universe is full of paradoxes! rather than "Paradoxes are impossible, so let's invent an impossible solution."
