God As Grounding Cause

[The Grand Nudger]

.............and it shits the bed, again.

[robvalue]

Khem has responded well so I don't need to add much to that, thanks ...

Is this where atheism is at these days? You'd rather deny that 2 + 2 = 4 than accept a theistic conclusion?

I went into amazing detail about this. You've gone into completely dishonest strawman mode already. I won't bother replying to you anymore. People can just read what I wrote, and see that it's not what you said I said, you know that right?

[The Grand Nudger]

I;m not sure that a catholic really has room to criticize people on basic math, anyway.  Quick, what's 1+1+1?

Remember, if you don;t say 1...you're in mortal sin.

[datc]

Is this where atheism is at these days? You'd rather deny that 2 + 2 = 4 than accept a theistic conclusion?

I went into amazing detail about this. You've gone into completely dishonest strawman mode already. I won't bother replying to you anymore. People can just read what I wrote, and see that it's not what you said I said, you know that right?

Well, excuse me while I look for an atheistic community where people are not, you know... insane.

[robvalue]

It's amazing he's still going on about maths, which he brought up as a completely irrelevant point in order to not answer my questions.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, excuse me while I look for an atheistic community where people are not, you know... insane.

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh-bye, lol.

---

It's amazing he's still going on about maths, which he brought up as a completely irrelevant point in order to not answer my questions.

But 2+2=4, how could you be an atheist, 2+2 clearly equals 4!

[pocaracas]

Read Spinoza if you're really stuck on the PSR. The only attribute required for a first cause is that it is itself uncaused (or perhaps self-caused). It is erroneous to think that a first cause needs any other attributes than that.

I think you are wrong on this one (and I think we have been over this). We can infer several things from a first cause:

Changeless/timeless: two things, but they go together. To be in a timeless state, there can be no change. Since time itself came into existence at the first moments of the universe (or whatever predecessor you prefer), prior to that must be a timeless state.

I think you are wrong on this one...
You see, ever since Einstein, we know that time and space are two aspects of the same thing, spacetime.
As far as I'm aware, nothing imposes spacetime coming "into existence at the first moments of the universe (or whatever predecessor you prefer)".

Immaterial: Since space came into existence at the first moments of the universe, the cause must not be made of at least the material in our universe. Material/physical object need space in which to exists and then you have the issue that if space exists, then time exists.

Again, space is an aspect of spacetime and we can't tell if it has just been there, or if it came into existence.
What we know is that it was compressed... very compressed... some 13.4 billion years ago, along with all energy and mass in the known Universe.

Personal: If the cause of the universe is timeless, then why is the universe only 14 billions years old? Why isn't it as permanent as its cause? The answer to that is that the cause of the universe must be endowed with a freedom of the will. Only persons have a freedom to act separate from any prior conditions. Only free will could get an effect with a beginning from a cause that is permanent. 

Can you think of a cause that would avoid these conclusions?

Since your premises are potentially false, and spacetime could potentially be in existence beyond the start of our Universe, then yes, all your conclusions can be avoided.

Of course, you can argue one step further and say that spacetime, in the absence of the Universe, would also need to have a cause... The trouble with this is that I can say it doesn't need a cause and just is. And none of us would be able to adequately support any of our positions, given the outlandish non-intuitive nature of completely empty and potentially infinite spacetime.

[robvalue]

There is one more intuitive way of having infinite causes, and that's with time cycling. After a certain amount of time, things end up exactly as they were.

I believe our our current models seem to predict a heat death though. (Weird design choice.) We could be wrong of course, and the heat death actually leads to a reset; or something else happens entirely.

I've mentioned before about extrapolation, too. If you have a model where all your data has come from some domain, it's going to be potentially reliable for future points within that domain, but if you instead put other ones in, reliability can be very bad. Applying any sort of logic or physical models to what happened / happens outside our space-time is pure guesswork.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Oh god fucking causes again.

I am sure all these theists are just coming on here to get their heads around exactly the same argument they've been given.

[Angrboda]

Personal: If the cause of the universe is timeless, then why is the universe only 14 billions years old? Why isn't it as permanent as its cause? The answer to that is that the cause of the universe must be endowed with a freedom of the will. Only persons have a freedom to act separate from any prior conditions. Only free will could get an effect with a beginning from a cause that is permanent. 

I've already pointed out to you why this is flawed once before. Do you just keep repeating the same flawed arguments hoping that a new audience is unfamiliar with your past?