(January 26, 2015 at 12:50 pm)robvalue Wrote: It is not established that everything needs a cause. It's just not something that can be stated so simply. It is also an amazingly overly simplistic way of trying to sum up amazingly complex quantum mechanics that even now we are only just getting a handle on.
Even if it was true, it's special pleading to exclude what you want to prove from your own rule. You have refuted yourself in doing so.
The argument fails hard, of course, because even if it works it gets you to "something". Not God. And even if it did get you to God, whatever the hell that is, it doesn't get you to "God in my favourite book". It's a terrible argument from start to finish.
My impression is that the consensus among cosmologists is that our universe is not infinite in the past so you must be saying that the universe (time and space) could have popped into existence uncaused?
There is no special pleading and nothing was excluded in the argument. Perhaps I should have spelled it out: Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause.
I am not seeing the argument "failing hard". I agree, it only proves that something caused the universe.
