Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[watchamadoodle]

One pitfall that I've noticed is that Christians try to debunk a vague deistic notion of God, and that is probably impossible.

In my case what helped was:
- learning how Judaism and Christianity evolved from other religions and changed in fundamental ways
- learning about the lack of evidence for God's activity in the world and what that implies about God's interest in humanity
- considering the injustice of heaven/hell based on a belief that is mostly a result of culture and upbringing

Also, it would help to know your denomination (they vary a lot you know )

On the first cause, why should God be exempt and the universe not be exempt? What's God's first cause?

[robvalue]

Kalam:

It assumes something can't come from nothing. This is unfounded as we have no experience of "nothing".

It assumes the universe came into existence, we have no evidence of that, it may have always existed in some state.

And finally, the conclusion only points to a "cause" which is not even necessarily a "being". Even if it was, a being isn't necessarily a god. Even if it was, it's not any particular God.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Alright, thanks for the encouraging welcome, everyone.

At risk of being quickly overwhelmed and outnumbered, I'd like to begin trying to better understand where you guys are coming from. With the understanding that I won't be able to adequately respond and address every person who replies, my first question is:

How do you guys refute the "Kalaam" argument? (some kind of supernatural, transcendent force or "god" must exist because of the necessity for a First Cause which is beyond matter, space, and time)

Here's how:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause;

Demonstrably false.

The universe began to exist;

Not yet known.

Therefore:
The universe has a cause.

Unsupported conclusion.

[Spooky]

I promise to be nice. PM me all you want.

[Mudhammam]

Hey Griffin, since you posed the same question here as in our PM, I'm just going to post the reply I sent you, in case others would benefit or would like to make further comments on the points I raised.

1. I have a creeping suspicion that concepts such as "causality" and "necessary being," which is what is truly meant by First Cause, are really not quite so simple as those we perceive in the context of our everyday experience; in fact, we know we don't live in a billiard ball universe as Newtonian physics once had us believe we did, and causality begins to look very strange at the level of fundamental particles. So, any argument that appeals to the nature of our experiences, as this one does (going back to the Scholastics and farther back still to Plato), must consider the knowledge we possess about that nature, and that knowledge is leaps and bounds above the soaring heights ancient and medieval philosophers believed natural philosophy could soar. It's far from certain that the Singularity (Big Bang) represents the beginning of being in such a way that justifies our appeal to "first" cause, although that might be a point I'd be willing to grant for the sake of language.

2. I'm not so sure the logic of the Kalam is valid. I readily admit that an infinite regress is inconceivable---which leaves it in the same ballpark as necessary being or first cause---but is it illogical? It seems to me to expose the limitations of reason but not necessarily any inherent contradiction. Why can't we logically ask what caused the cause we are calling the first? Perhaps one could suggest an "eternal recurrence," an idea also suggested by the ancients (Presocratics like Empedocles and Zeno, that famous lover of paradoxes involving infinities), and taken up again by Nietzsche, and retort that the First Cause is the same as the Last Effect, and causation is a cycle that has no beginning or end but is a genesis, a becoming to be, that exists necessarily? Then again, does that really satisfy the concept of infinity or does it suggest setting limits on infinity by conceiving it as a closed series? And if it's an open series, then how could any effect follow a cause when we can't seem to find the point where the fourth cause was begotten by the third, which was begotten by the second, and then of course, that followed the first? But to even the ask that question, haven't we already conceived infinity as a closed series? Haven't we merely set an arbitrary starting point and asked where the other end lies, and if so, what is logically different about doing this whether we conceive time as moving forwards or backwards?

Most importantly, though, what does "first cause" do to actually alleviate the situation? I'm inclined to agree with Arthur Schopenhauer when he wrote, "A first cause is just as inconceivable as is the point where space has an end or as a moment when time had a beginning. For every cause is a change and here we are necessarily bound to ask about the change which preceded it, and by that which it had been brought about, and so on ad infinitum, ad infinitum... The law of causality is therefore not so obliging as to allow itself to be used like a cab which we dismiss after we reach our destination." How could a first cause be anything that becoming can't be?

3. Why should we assume this First Cause, if we allow ourselves that, is God? Wouldn't that be an unnecessary step which easily leads into the same folly that the ancients committed when they treated the Sun as a god?

What do you think?

[robvalue]

Oh yeah, I forgot that part. Special pleading for "God". If God can have always existed, then so can the universe.

[abaris]

Looking forward to hearing from you guys!

If you're serious, feel free to drop me a PM.

[Esquilax]

How do you guys refute the "Kalaam" argument? (some kind of supernatural, transcendent force or "god" must exist because of the necessity for a First Cause which is beyond matter, space, and time)

The problem with Kalam, the really big, fatal structural flaw with it, is that it doesn't conclude with the answer that the claimant is trying to defend. It literally doesn't answer the question it is posed as an answer to.

"Everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause"? Since when was "cause" a synonym for "god"? And where to you get supernatural and transcendent from that argument? Those are tacked on extras, cards that the person using the argument is trying to palm and hope you don't notice. My suggestion is that you not let yourself be fooled.

So there's that, but there's also the fact that, well, the argument is just plain wrong. You won't find many scientists willing to state that the universe began to exist; what you will hear is that there was a beginning to the expansion of our universe into its current state, where we can't even predict what happened before that because it's totally unlike anything we've ever known. Essentially, it's the point at which our ability to describe reality breaks down, where we'd need an entirely new language to deal with it, and so we don't even have the first clue what goes on beyond that point. Theists like to conflate this idea with the idea of a beginning of the universe, pretending that the subtleties of the science don't exist, but that's simply not a tenable position, and therefore the second premise of Kalam is dead wrong, and the argument dies with it.

Finally, Kalam is particularly galling if you know the history of the argument. It's actually the second iteration of a more general cosmological argument that used to run: "Everything has a cause, the universe is a thing, therefore the universe has a cause." Perhaps you can see the obvious flaw in that rendition of the argument? "What caused god, then?"

When it became clear that the original cosmological argument was a non-starter, Kalam was invented. The "begins to exist" language was added to the first premise, and this is particularly infuriating because it was done so purely to keep the cosmological argument valid. No evidence had been found, no research conducted, no philosophical thought offered; the argument was wrong, and so based on absolutely nothing, it was changed so that it was not-wrong. It's so clear, just looking at the history, that the priorities of the people formulating this argument weren't to come to a correct conclusion, but to come to the god conclusion by any means necessary. That's not exactly a way to come to truth, that's a presupposition.

In doing so, of course, the argument now makes even more unsupported assertions, like the proposed existence of a category of things that didn't begin to exist... but there are plenty of problems there without needing to get into that one. That's just the terrible cherry on this awful, awful cake.

Feel free to PM me if you want to learn more. My topics of note are evolution and the deconstruction of theistic arguments; apparently I'm good at that, I've been voted best debater here two years running.

[Minimalist]

Ok right, so Min has evidence when he claims that Jesus was a myth does he?

More to the point, you have no evidence that he was anything but.

[robvalue]

He is a myth. He told me himself.