Arguments for God's Existence from Contingency

[GrandizerII]

Ok, I'm going to address the first few points made in the OP link. Because I'm bored and free to post something tonight.

St. Thomas begins his Third Way by saying that "we find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be." (ST, I, 2, 3)

From one perspective, this does look like it's true. But look at it another way, any of those things could be necessarily existing at some point in time and/or universe, and yet necessarily not exist at some other point in time and/or some other universe. I think it is logically possible that the whole cosmos (all of existence apart from God) is necessary, with every event in it being necessary, as the non-existence of one thing at some point in time in some universe A may partly be an expression of some ingrained cosmological rule that all things possible are actual, just as much as the existence of that same thing at the same point in time in some parallel (and slightly different) universe B. If all things possible are actual, then we would expect both the existence and non-existence of the thing to occur at the same point in time (in parallel fashion).

Now if the universe began, then "at some point," to use this phrase loosely, there was nothing. If, on the other hand, the universe never began, then things in it must have existed forever, for an actual infinity of, say, years.

According to eternalism, that may indeed be the case. Every moment may be a forever moment. Presently, a thing exists eternally, and yet that same thing also presently does not exist and in an eternal manner. If you look at time as a spatial coordinate, rather than something that flows, then every moment in time presently exists, just as your x-y-z location and my x-y-z location both presently exist.

(This isn't 100% intelligible in its own right, but let's suppose this for the sake of argument.)

So your God existing forever is 100% intelligible, but any other entity existing forever is not? There is no logical justification I know of for what is special pleading being committed here.

But if it is possible for an existing thing not to be, then the probability of its corrupting within some finite span of time is non-zero. But in infinite time, all probable events will occur, and an infinite number of times, too. Hence he goes on that "if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence." Either way, this is a problem, because "if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence -- which is absurd."

If you look at it the way I like to look at it, which is more in line with modern science and specifically Einstein's theory of special relativity, then you don't even have to worry about nothing existing.

And the rest of the points basically follow from the first points addressed here. So I won't bother with going further because there's no need. God is not necessarily the explanation for the existence of the universe if the universe itself necessarily exists.

Of course, reality itself may be way crazier than any of us could imagine. You and I are both very limited beings and so there's a good chance neither of us are anywhere close to getting this right. But hey, I've addressed your points, and will see if you can come up with something clever as a rebuttal, one that I have not heard of.