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[Shuggananas]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were other universes that exist in the void of space we're expanding into.

I believe in this and what's more fascinating is we could never know.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

I've been exposed to most/all the major arguments for the existence of God, cosmological/ontological/transcendental, but I've yet to be convinced. If any Theists would like to construct a deductive arguement by setting out your premises I'd love to have a look at why you find it convincing. I'd especially like to get a detailed reponse from the poster who has been convinced by Aquinas' cosmological arguement, I'd love to get your take on his premises and conclusion.

 

[?oe?oe]

Don't need to read past Genesis to know the Bible is a load of bull. If there is a god, it isn't one from a farmer's book.

 

[OriginalThinking]

Where did God come from?

Easy. God is the exception to the rule. After all, it's god.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

Easy. God is the exception to the rule. After all, it's god.

That's called special pleading and it's a logical fallacy.

 

[sphinx]

but maybe back then, with those entities that can create big bangs that evolve into our reality as we now it, the laws of nature may have been absolutely and completely different from ours,

One of our problems is that we are prisoners of our own sizes, we are pretty damn incredibly ridicously small. if one human being were the size of a galaxy, what would the universe look like to him??? and where would that leave us? we'd be in a "planck lenght world" for him, or even smaller I think. and where those that leave ants, cells, and (to us) microscopic beings? they are life too.

considering the sheer vastness of the universe, is there a possibility that there are living things out there the size of say, planet jupiter? I actually think so.

what I am trying to get to is: size limits our perseption and understanding. Shit hits the fan when we try to understand things the size of 10 + hundreds of zeros after it. we bail out, we fail quite simply. For our creators, our universe may not be that big or grand at all.

there is no "must" or "most have" but take a look around and using common sense you'd come to the conclusion that if homo sapiens has evolved to this point in just a tiny fraction of time in cosmological terms, then imagine what may/could have happened regarding evolution in billions and billions of years across the universe with other civilizations in other physical circumstances, probably less limiting that ours.

in our case, we just have earth and homo sapiens and frankly, we kind of suck: we are a weak as fuck species, we may be somewhat smart but we can't stand even minor changes in temperature, our bodies get damaged extremely easy and we need oxygen 24/7 to live, plus we understand 3 dimensions only and it takes forever to mature our brains, I personally think we learn very very very slowly.

so conclusion= better species + billions of billions of years to evolution = ability to create.

I am really curiuos about whether GAF thinks I could be on to something with these ideas or whether they are absolute nonsense, in which case I'd like for someone to counterargument them and explain why.

Spoiler

be gentle

 

[And_Gignac]

God is like the laziest way to explain the beginning of everything. A psychological by-product of how we perceive our parents during childhood.

 

[Principate]

That's called special pleading and it's a logical fallacy.

TBF it's the same question ahow do we exist. just like you have a cycle of the beginning an the end that cycle must exist within something, there's some sort of existence that caused that, or created that and so on and so forth, you either replace that as infinity substance being, force, or an infinite loop.

You can replace that gap with a "god" or not but it still exists. So either God must be infinite or something else is. With Hawkins belief gravity is basically that infinite force but our understanding of it isn't all that great,

 

[travisbickle]

Oh shit you just cracked it. With this knowledge you'll probably put an end to all organized faith.

 

[Palette Swap]

That's called special pleading and it's a logical fallacy.

To avoid any problem of logic or self-consistency, the simplest explanation is that God isn't subject to the rule.
Rather, it's an axiomatic truth that God created time and space and as such exists beyond them, being everywhere and everywhen at once.
In Christianity, Augustine nailed this pretty early on.

 

[Lucc]

The obvious answer: There is an Anitgod!

God + Antigod = 0

Now replace God with Matter

Then have Marvel write a strory around it!

 

[ElTorro]

To avoid any problem of logic or self-consistency, the simplest explanation is that God isn't subject to the rule.

That only works if you presuppose the existence of god as given, which is what the argument tries to establish in the first place. The argument becomes circular. "Why does God exist? Because he is a necessary being. Why is he a necessary being? Because he exists and this property is necessary for his existence to be self-consistent."

Rather, it's an axiomatic truth that God created time and space and as such exists beyond them, being everywhere and everywhen at once.

I can define the "axiomatic truth" that the universe was created by the fart of a green goblin. Axioms are axioms. That does not make them automatically true.

 

[Tertullian]

Poetically, I get it and in some sense I like that idea.

Intellectually, I think it's even less compelling than "first mover" style arguments. I see no reason why this "universe system" needs someone pulling the strings. It's as if I have a computer that appears to have all the mechanisms in place to make it work, and you tell me that there is a third party actually driving its processes.

1. I don't think it's necessary. A system once set up doesn't need someone to be driving it.
2. I don't see evidence for it.



I would be happy to engage with classical arguments if you articulated them to us in this forum. I appreciate that this is a tall order and beyond the scope of this medium. I might feel the same about those who have not engaged with other philosophical referents (i.e. Euthyphro, The Ship of Thessisus). Could there be something in a full understanding of Aquinas that would be pre-requisite for such debates on God's existence? Sure.

But at the same time, these pre-existing arguments are just historical referents, and it might actually be a hinderance to be slavishly devoted to understanding/answering them. I think it's incorrect that you have declared those unfamiliar as "pop atheists". Not to say that there aren't glib, shallow atheists (sometimes us non-believers scoff at them too! even if we agree). But familiarity with those popular frameworks of how to view this debate is not a pre-requisite to having this debate.

Actually I think a fresh mind, uninhibited by the frameworks that have been passed down to them, may have closer access to the truth. Maybe the real answer to the question "is there a God" is not best answered by someone familiar with the history of religion, its theology, its most beloved arguments and counter-arguments.... but rather by someone who has never been biased by such packages of assumptions. So I do bristle at ideas that people must be versed in "classic" arguments in order to be credible people who can engage with the topic. This might just be an engagement with sophistry.

The answer to "is there a god" might well be the "no, of course not" spoken by a non-indoctrinated child with no exposure or study of religion and no horse in the race. Having to study Aquinas is potentially biasing. Just as having to study Dawkins would be.

There are a million frameworks of how to view this life passed down by various faith traditions around the world. It is not required to be versed in them or to debate them on their own terms in order to dismiss them.

This all strikes me as terribly odd. All I can think to say to it is that no, of course ignorance of what the greatest figures in philosophy of religion have actually said doesn't make you better at philosophy of religion.

Would ignorance of the elaborate work of Einstein and Hawking make you a better physicist because studying them is "potentially biasing"? Would ignorance of Thucydides make you a better historian because heck, who knows, maybe his "framework" is just "sophistry"? Should a psychologist not bother actually understanding Freud, Maslow, Erikson, and Piaget on the off chance that coming to the discipline fresh will make him better at the field than everyone who came before him? Is there any other discipline where you would apply this same logic?

Sure, studying the claims of Aristotle and the scholastics might be just engaging with sophistry. But how could you know that without, you know, actually reading them and understanding their arguments?

You write that "The answer to 'is there a god' might well be the 'no, of course not' spoken by a non-indoctrinated child with no exposure or study of religion and no horse in the race." The best answer to a difficult question might be the reflexive answer of the most ignorant person possible? Seriously?

You write "It is not required to be versed in them or to debate them on their own terms in order to dismiss them." You don't have to be versed in a view before you dismiss it? Seriously? Of course you do.

I've been exposed to most/all the major arguments for the existence of God, cosmological/ontological/transcendental, but I've yet to be convinced. If any Theists would like to construct a deductive arguement by setting out your premises I'd love to have a look at why you find it convincing. I'd especially like to get a detailed reponse from the poster who has been convinced by Aquinas' cosmological arguement, I'd love to get your take on his premises and conclusion.

This is reasonable. At any rate, my goal in this thread, as I've said a few times, is not to convince people that medieval cosmological arguments are overwhelmingly convincing. Most philosophers are not Platonists and Aristotelians, after all, and a substantial minority of philosophers of religion are atheists who do understand these arguments for the most part, and who present intellectually serious objections to them. Maybe they're right. My main point is that many of the most common refutations of these arguments by pop atheists are completely point-missing and stupid.

The most recent book I've read on Aquinas' arguments specifically is this one. I know that linking to a book is something of a cop-out, but the Aristotelian metaphysics behind Aquinas' arguments really have to be defended at length for the arguments to make sense. That book takes about 130 pages to defend the Five Ways, and that's pretty much the minimum number of pages you could possibly read and actually understand the basics of the arguments.

 

[Mario]

Also because of the big bang we know that we're expanding into something..

You can't actually say that definitively. We don't know whether that is the case or not.

 

[And_Gignac]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were other universes that exist in the void of space we're expanding into.

Ok I am not a physicist but as far as I recall we are not expanding in "void of space". Such thing doesn't exist. Space is being created thanks to the expansion.

 

[True Savior]

∫Go(d) dx

 

[Vicetrailia]

Just simply because God cannot be seen or heard, people will question it. Based on that some won't be able to extend their imagination to believe.

Because religion is advanced by human beings people will question and not believe in it.

 

[Principate]

You can't actually say that definitively. We don't know whether that is the case or not.

Umm yes you can. Do you even know how we came about the big bang theory in the first place? Red shift, the red shift in electromagnetic radiation proved the universe was moving away from us, which is how we formulated that the universe existed at single point in the past. The fact we know the universe is moving away from us is why we know it's expanding into something. We have models of this expansion, which is how the big crunch model etc came about. These are gravitational models.

Ok I am not a physicist but as far as I recall we are not expanding in "void of space". Such thing doesn't exist. Space is being created thanks to the expansion.

What you refer to as space, what I'm referring to is what exists outside the universe. We don't know precisely what is but it is some of plane. otherwise the universe wouldn't actually be expanding as we know it to be as in physically expanding.

 

[Mario]

Umm yes you can. Do you even know how we came about the big bang theory in the first place? Red shift, the red shift in electromagnetic radiation proved the universe was moving away from us, which is how we formulated that the universe existed at single point in the past. The fact we know the universe is moving away from us is why we know it's expanding into something. We have models of this expansion, which is how the big crunch model etc came about. These are gravitational models.

Expansion doesn't necessitate expansion "into" something.

Some reading for you on the subject
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/ab...t-is-the-universe-expanding-into-intermediate

 

[Sutton Dagger]

To avoid any problem of logic or self-consistency, the simplest explanation is that God isn't subject to the rule.
Rather, it's an axiomatic truth that God created time and space and as such exists beyond them, being everywhere and everywhen at once.
In Christianity, Augustine nailed this pretty early on.

Your first sentence is literally special pleading though. Special pleading applies to the notion that everything must have a cause, except for God and only God. The 'exception to the rule' could thus be applied to something else, such as a single particle which 'created' space-time.

 

[Servbot24]

If God exists, then he exists outside the laws of physics he created.

I actually do believe in a god-like entity. I think all of our religions are likely wrong though.

 

[Principate]

Expansion doesn't necessitate expansion "into" something.

Some reading for you on the subject
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/ab...t-is-the-universe-expanding-into-intermediate

No it doesn't but that's whole different theory I find with much more questionable validity.

 

[Shuggananas]

Ok I am not a physicist but as far as I recall we are not expanding in "void of space". Such thing doesn't exist. Space is being created thanks to the expansion.

well it has to expand somewhere

Just simply because God cannot be seen or heard, people will question it. Based on that some won't be able to extend their imagination to believe.

Because religion is advanced by human beings people will question and not believe in it.

I question religion because people made up a hell lot of bullshit to make me believe in it
yes a spaceman was crucified then resurrected then he went to heavens after healing people magically, that sounds alright to me, I should totally believe in god

 

[waypoetic]

Even creationists don't have answers, atleast none that will make any sense. I mean... no creation story makes sense. I do have a favorite though (!): the cherokee creation story.

 

[Mario]

well it has to expand somewhere

No, it doesn't. It can be stretching within itself. However, that is difficult for us to comprehend at the physical scale we operate at and our own practical perception of the world.

A good analogy is considering the Universe as the surface of a balloon. Traveling on the balloon can get you anywhere on the surface but can't get you anywhere not on the surface. The balloon can even expand giving more surface to travel but you still limited to the surface.

It's a similar problem to trying to comprehend the prospect of time not existing before a certain point and the possibility there was no "before" the Big Bang. As creatures of time, that's almost impossible to fathom.

 

[Principate]

No, it doesn't. It can be stretching within itself. However, that is difficult for us to comprehend at the physical scale we operate at and our own practical perception of the world.

A good analogy is considering the Universe as the surface of a balloon. Traveling on the balloon can get you anywhere on the surface but can't get you anywhere not on the surface. The balloon can even expand giving more surface to travel but you still limited to the surface.

It's a similar problem to trying to comprehend the prospect of time not existing before a certain point and the possibility there was no "before" the Big Bang. As creatures of time, that's almost impossible to fathom.

The issue I find with this theory is where is the hard proof mathematical or otherwise. That page you provided showed no mathematical models nor did it present any physical tangible evidence. it's entirely built on a list of assumptions, such as the universe is infinite etc.

 

[RumblePuff]

Sometimes it's just better to make sit up if we don't have the answer.

 

[Mario]

The issue I find with this theory is where is the hard proof mathematical or otherwise. That page you provided showed no mathematical models nor did it present any physical tangible evidence. it's entirely built on a list of assumptions, such as the universe is infinite etc.

We don't know whether the Universe is infinite or not or otherwise completely self contained and "all there is", therefore we don't know whether or not it is expanding into something, therefore you are making an unsubstantiated assertion when you say that it is.

It is of course perfectly reasonable to say that the Universe might be expanding into something.

 

[OriginalThinking]

That's called special pleading and it's a logical fallacy.

It's called sarcasm and it went way over your head ;-)

 

[PulseONE]

Where did God come from?

The human mind, good sir.

Either that or Megagod, God's God.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

This all strikes me as terribly odd. All I can think to say to it is that no, of course ignorance of what the greatest figures in philosophy of religion have actually said doesn't make you better at philosophy of religion.

Would ignorance of the elaborate work of Einstein and Hawking make you a better physicist because studying them is "potentially biasing"? Would ignorance of Thucydides make you a better historian because heck, who knows, maybe his "framework" is just "sophistry"? Should a psychologist not bother actually understanding Freud, Maslow, Erikson, and Piaget on the off chance that coming to the discipline fresh will make him better at the field than everyone who came before him? Is there any other discipline where you would apply this same logic?

Sure, studying the claims of Aristotle and the scholastics might be just engaging with sophistry. But how could you know that without, you know, actually reading them and understanding their arguments?

You write that "The answer to 'is there a god' might well be the 'no, of course not' spoken by a non-indoctrinated child with no exposure or study of religion and no horse in the race." The best answer to a difficult question might be the reflexive answer of the most ignorant person possible? Seriously?

You write "It is not required to be versed in them or to debate them on their own terms in order to dismiss them." You don't have to be versed in a view before you dismiss it? Seriously? Of course you do.


This is reasonable. At any rate, my goal in this thread, as I've said a few times, is not to convince people that medieval cosmological arguments are overwhelmingly convincing. Most philosophers are not Platonists and Aristotelians, after all, and a substantial minority of philosophers of religion are atheists who do understand these arguments for the most part, and who present intellectually serious objections to them. Maybe they're right. My main point is that many of the most common refutations of these arguments by pop atheists are completely point-missing and stupid.

The most recent book I've read on Aquinas' arguments specifically is this one. I know that linking to a book is something of a cop-out, but the Aristotelian metaphysics behind Aquinas' arguments really have to be defended at length for the arguments to make sense. That book takes about 130 pages to defend the Five Ways, and that's pretty much the minimum number of pages you could possibly read and actually understand the basics of the arguments.

Thanks for linking to that article and the book. I'll definitely have to order it when I get some time. Admittedly I've only ever read heavily condensed versions of Aquinas' 5 ways, with Hume's composition fallacy being a major sticking point for me delving deeper, I may have overestimated his refutation. Any online resources that are worth a look?

 

[Sutton Dagger]

It's called sarcasm and it went way over your head ;-)

Dammit

 

[Principate]

We don't know whether the Universe is infinite or not or otherwise completely self contained and "all there is", therefore we don't know whether or not it is expanding into something, therefore you are making an unsubstantiated assertion when you say that it is.

It is of course perfectly reasonable to say that the Universe might be expanding into something.

Which is fair enough maybe in the future we can discover such proof, but until then I'll stick to traditional high density low density physical expansion model, if for nothing else that that the belief that a single event or explosion created an infinite existence that is the boundary of all "space" seems like a pretty hard pill to swallow. I mean the basis of the theory is energy creating matter, at some point in the past, why do we assume the universe is an infinite staticish existence when something clearly existed before said existence.

 

[Timedog]

Even thinking about this stuff (what if anything created god assuming a god exists, what if anything lead to the big bang, etc) to the point of trying to argue ANYTHING is just mental masturbation.

 

[Cheerilee]

Could god microwave a burrito so hot that even he couldn't eat it?

Yes.

And then he would eat it.

That's how infinity works, and God laughs at infinity.

 

[Mario]

Which is far enough maybe in the future we can discover such proof, but until then I'll stick to traditional high density low density physical expansion model, if for nothing else that that the belief that a single event or explosion created an infinite existence that is the boundary of all "space" seems like a pretty hard pill to swallow. I mean the basis of the theory is energy creating matter, at some point in the past, why do we assume the universe is an infinite staticish existence when something clearly existed before said existence.

Well, we don't know if there was a "before" either...

 

[Principate]

Even thinking about this stuff (what if anything created god assuming a god exists, what if anything lead to the big bang, etc) to the point of trying to argue ANYTHING is just mental masturbation.

No it's not how do you think we arrived at the big bang theory in first place, theories of the creation of universe. We'll contain modifying/expanding it as more evidence is revealed, until then all we engage in is thought experiments much like Einstein did many of which turned out to be correct.

Well, we don't know if there was a "before" either...

Clearly there was a before otherwise it's not a big bang theory, I'd call that something else entirely.

 

[Palette Swap]

That only works if you presuppose the existence of god as given, which is what the argument tries to establish in the first place. The argument becomes circular. "Why does God exist? Because he is a necessary being. Why is he a necessary being? Because he exists and this property is necessary for his existence to be self-consistent."



I can define the "axiomatic truth" that the universe was created by the fart of a green goblin. Axioms are axioms. That does not make them automatically true.

I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of an axiom. The basic idea is that it's a given, a postulate you'll never demonstrate nor should try to. Of course any inference going from this postulate back to it will seem circular, axioms are by essence unprovable, you can only check for consistency.

I always get the impression these discussions are a huge misunderstanding: you'll never prove or disprove this, there's no "gotcha" in there millions of people haven't thought of millions of times over the centuries. Any argument for or against the simple proposition "God created time and space" will boil down in the end to "I believe/I don't believe in God". I don't believe in either, mind you.

 

[NooM]

You can't assume that the laws of the universe apply to an omnipotent being that created the universe and defined its laws.

This. The OP started with an incorrect presupposition.

 

[BowieZ]

So according to the thread, a lot of people are saying something had to cause the Universe to begin to exist (ie pre-Big Bang), therefore, A GOD!

I'm sorry, but why can't the Universe have just created itself, like, perhaps, the matter of the Universe has always existed, perhaps in some sort of cyclical time loop? Why do people presume the Universe can't be infinite but happily presume a god can be infinite?

Because if a god at some point created the Universe, he would have had to create the laws to allow creation in the first place, but what parameters allowed him to create those laws? How can a god exist within anything without something else having created something for the god to exist within in the first place? Well, yes, you could say, the god created his own existential parameters, but why can't that apply to the Universe as well? Why can't the Universe have just sort of created its own parameters for laws for existence?

Why add in that extra layer of complexity? The Universe might as well be considered the equivalent of a god.

 

[Arkeband]

Sometimes it's just better to make sit up if we don't have the answer.

Religion, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[ElTorro]

I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of an axiom. The basic idea is that it's a given, a postulate you'll never demonstrate nor should try to. Of course any inference going from this postulate back to it will seem circular, axioms are by essence unprovable, you can only check for consistency.

I understand what an axiom is. My point is that by there very nature they are ad hoc, and the internal consistency of models based on them does not warrant any judgement about how truthfully they map to reality. As such, the number of implicit assumptions behind an axiom's formulation has to kept as minimal as possible, for probability-theoretical reasons alone. And defining that "God created time and space" certainly violates that basic necessity.

 

[Principate]

So according to the thread, a lot of people are saying something had to cause the Universe to begin to exist (ie pre-Big Bang), therefore, A GOD!

I'm sorry, but why can't the Universe have just created itself, like, perhaps, the matter of the Universe has always existed, perhaps in some sort of cyclical time loop? Why do people presume the Universe can't be infinite but happily presume a god can be infinite?

Because if a god at some point created the Universe, he would have had to create the laws to allow creation in the first place, but what parameters allowed him to create those laws? How can a god exist within anything without something else having created something for the god to exist within in the first place? Well, yes, you could say, the god created his own existential parameters, but why can't that apply to the Universe as well? Why can't the Universe have just sort of created its own parameters for laws for existence?

Why add in that extra layer of complexity? The Universe might as well be considered the equivalent of a god.

Basically comes down to Einstein's postulation of higher plane of existence, you either believe it exists or that it doesn't.

 

[Mario]

Clearly there was a before otherwise it's not a big bang theory, I'd call that something else entirely.

Not if that is the point at which time itself was created. The general theory of relativity predicts that this is the case.

Here is some more reading for you
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

 

[Principate]

Not if that is the point at which time itself was created. The general theory of relativity predicts that this is the case.

Here is some more reading for you
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

Already read that, and yes more assumptions without evidence. Talking about your theory that article does little to back it up, as in it has no real solid conclusion at most it's a postulation.

 

[Mario]

Already read that, and yes more assumptions without evidence. Talking about your theory that article has little to do with it.

As opposed to your own assumptions without evidence?

It would be more correct for you to say there might be a time before the Big Bang.


It's okay to say "we don't know".

 

[Kyzer]

Ex Nihilo. That's kind of. gods thing.


Something from nothing.

 

[Principate]

As opposed to your own assumptions without evidence?

It would be more correct for you to say there might be a time before the Big Bang.


It's okay to say "we don't know".

No my the assumptions based on mathematical traditional models, such as the big crunch, infinite expansion or stability. Even, within that article it's a mere postulation based on numerous assumptions (infinite universe, imaginary time etc) without much meat to it.

 

[Palette Swap]

As such, the number of implicit assumptions behind an axiom's formulation has to kept as minimal as possible, for probability-theoretical reasons alone.

This is a good point. My use of the word Axiom was a bit loose in the sense that a creed functions in the same way but doesn't really have any strict probability/believability constraint. If you need 100 unlikely hypotheses for your set of arbitrary beliefs to work, knock yourself out. The day one guy comes and says he disagrees with one particular statement or wants to add another one, you might have a schism on your hands.

 

[Mario]

No my the assumptions based on mathematical traditional models, such as the big crunch infinite expansion or stability. Even, within that article it's a mere postulation without much meat to it.

Hey, if you want to keep stating unproven things as true, then feel free.

Just expect to get called out on it now and again.