What is wrong with this premise?

[Darkstar]

The notion of God existing outside of reality is nonsensical. I never made that claim.....I never would make that claim.

Perhaps I misunderstood you. Earlier you said:

I often hear atheist ask that if it is possible that God has always existed why can't it be possible that the universe has always existed? Which is a good question(although I would use "reality" instead of universe).

Since the premise can be used to exclude reality from the cause and effect cycle it is not specific to God.

I had assumed that you meant god existed outside of reality, rather than outside of the universe (e.g. in a multiverse, perhaps).

Now then:

Mathmatics is something and as far as I am concerned its existence is eternal. Nothing has ever caused 2+2 to equal 4. It just always been that. It requires no cause.

This is actually false. It could have been apple pie + magic fairies = elbow if the terms had been defined differently. Numbers are abstract concepts invented by humans to model reality; they are not absolutes in and of themselves. That is, they are axioms rather than universal truths.

I found this interesting video on the subject that explains this better than I can:

[AFTT47]

Heywood, draw a circle on a piece of paper. That circle represents the universe or existence as we know it. Your premise applies inside the circle. There is no reason to assume it applies outside because all of our physical laws are a product of the circle itself. You may assume that everything which exists inside the circle had a cause but there is no reason to suppose the circle itself had a cause.

You spoke of the premise of everything requiring a cause being intuitively evident but your intuition is not even reliable inside the circle. Relativity is not intuitive. Quantum mechanics is majorly not intuitive. Someone once said that if quantum mechanics doesn't shock you, you don't understand it. Yet quantum mechanics has withstood every test we've thrown at it. It is undeniably real - despite flying in the face of common sense. Surely you can see that if you are unable to intuit some of the things inside the circle, you can forget about intuiting things outside it.

[Heywood]

I found this interesting video on the subject that explains this better than I can:

Thanks for the video. I found it interesting and entertaining. I do agree that numbers are descriptions. Numbers refer to something other than themselves.

Where I disagree is the claim that they are made up. They are not made up descriptions but rather absolute descriptions. An alien might use a different "word" for two, but what ever "word" it uses is going to mean exactly the same thing as we mean when we say "two". The notion of a reality without quantities is nonsensical.

[Angrboda]

Where I disagree is the claim that they are made up. They are not made up descriptions but rather absolute descriptions. An alien might use a different "word" for two, but what ever "word" it uses is going to mean exactly the same thing as we mean when we say "two". The notion of a reality without quantities is nonsensical.

Only if they are deploying a system that uses the descriptor "two" in the same way as our system of counting. I realize it's counter-intuitive, but it really is a product of adopting a specific system of assumptions and rules. Even in our world if we define a number as a word having a certain number of letters, then two + two = twelve, because two has 3 letters and twelve has six letters. It all depends on the rules and conventions you adopt. There is no "natural" set of rules and definitions. (We could also use numerical symbols and become more abstract. 2+2 = 11, 2+2 = 14, etc. If we include the plus sign as a number, then 2+2 = 311, and so forth. And we would talk about it differently: "A basket with an apple, a donut, and a plum in it has 567 objects inside it," or perhaps, "A plum and a plum and a plum are 133,811,345,870 things," depending on where we stop "interpreting" the symbolic descriptors.)

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By abstracting away various amounts of detail, mathematicians have created theories of various algebraic structures that apply to many objects. For instance, almost all systems studied are sets, to which the theorems of set theory apply. Those sets that have a certain binary operation defined on them form magmas, to which the concepts concerning magmas, as well those concerning sets, apply. We can add additional constraints on the algebraic structure, such as associativity (to form semigroups); identity, and inverses (to form groups); and other more complex structures. With additional structure, more theorems could be proved, but the generality is reduced. The "hierarchy" of algebraic objects (in terms of generality) creates a hierarchy of the corresponding theories: for instance, the theorems of group theory apply to rings (algebraic objects that have two binary operations with certain axioms) since a ring is a group over one of its operations. Mathematicians choose a balance between the amount of generality and the richness of the theory.

. . . . . . .

Because of its generality, abstract algebra is used in many fields of mathematics and science. For instance, algebraic topology uses algebraic objects to study topologies. The recently (As of 2006) proved Poincaré conjecture asserts that the fundamental group of a manifold, which encodes information about connectedness, can be used to determine whether a manifold is a sphere or not. Algebraic number theory studies various number rings that generalize the set of integers. Using tools of algebraic number theory, Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem.

In physics, groups are used to represent symmetry operations, and the usage of group theory could simplify differential equations. In gauge theory, the requirement of local symmetry can be used to deduce the equations describing a system. The groups that describe those symmetries are Lie groups, and the study of Lie groups and Lie algebras reveals much about the physical system; for instance, the number of force carriers in a theory is equal to dimension of the Lie algebra, and these bosons interact with the force they mediate if the Lie algebra is nonabelian.

Wikipedia | Abstract Algebra

[Mister Agenda]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

Virtual particles.

And there is rigorous math that indicates a universe from nothing is possible and gravitational waves detected that are predicted by that math.

Nothing conclusive, but enough to say that there are problems with taking that as a premise.

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By default I don't see why your premise should be true.
But can you specify what your definition of a cause is, and what you mean by something coming into existence.

I would accept the premise as true because in my experience everything which has come into existence has had some cause.

What have you experienced coming into existence? Are you talking about transformations of things that already exist?

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How do we know that these particles are not caused by existence, I.e. their cresttion is inherent within the physical laws of existence.

I would sooner believe that the cause is non-local rather than they come into existence un-caused.

Why should what you'd sooner believe enter into it?

I see from your Harry Potter movie comment that you are actually talking about transformations of already existing things. I can agree that transformations of already existing things require causes.

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What you're about to do with it.

Boru

I don't plan on doing anything with it. I'm just curious why some atheists think this is a faulty premise. To me it seems intuitively true.

When it comes to quantum mechanics, which it does, intuition is worthless.

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Then does your "god" exist outside the universe?

I have come to the conclusion that even if God doesn't exist, there must be more to reality than just the observable universe.

That's a pretty safe bet. Our ability to observe the universe is limited, and in theory always will be, since we would have to convert the entire universe into instrumentation to observe itself and all the other instruments in order to be able to observe the whole universe, and that just doesn't sound practical or desirable, and probably not possible either.

[Ryantology]

Since the premise can be used to exclude reality from the cause and effect cycle it is not specific to God.

I see no reason to accept any first cause hypotheses, regardless of whether they involve a god or not. Whatever the first cause might be, it would be an unjustifiable exception to the rule.

[wiploc]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

First, we have no reason to believe it. It even seems not to be true, since the weight of opinion among quantum physicists is that some things come into existence without causes.

Second, it is arbitrary and self serving. If they believed in a god with three left arms, they'd be saying that everything without three left arms has a cause. You can't prove that a sea turtle created the universe by saying, "Everything has a cause except sea turtles."

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By default I don't see why your premise should be true.
But can you specify what your definition of a cause is, and what you mean by something coming into existence.

I would accept the premise as true because in my experience everything which has come into existence has had some cause.

If that's your test, then you should also accept the claim that everything has a cause, right?

[Heywood]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

First, we have no reason to believe it. It even seems not to be true, since the weight of opinion among quantum physicists is that some things come into existence without causes.

All quantum physicist can say is that some things come into existence without local causes.

[Heywood]

If that's your test, then you should also accept the claim that everything has a cause, right?

My conception of God has a cause.

[IATIA]

Premise: Everything that has come into existence has had a cause.

What is wrong with the above premise?

Then what "caused" god?