quote:
On the other side, you get atheists who travel from the reasonable, "the God of the Bible is a highly suspect concept" to the absurd "we can absolutely know that there is no creative force responsible for our universe at all.

Where did the creative force responsible for our universe come from? I'm pretty sure that's where all theist arguments fall apart.

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Posted by FooManChoo

Member since Dec 2012

41870 posts

Posted on 9/21/17 at 5:03 pm to bmy

quote:
Where did the creative force responsible for our universe come from? I'm pretty sure that's where all theist arguments fall apart.

There's a difference between "everything that exists must have had a cause" and "everything that has an effect must have a cause". I believe the latter. If there is a creator that transcends above the creation, it's feasible to believe that this God is not constrained to the rules of causality that which all other things in the universe are subjected.

And even if a person rejects that a supernatural being can be exempted from causation, you're stuck with another issue in that all things must have had a cause, going back infinitely, which casts doubt on a big bang where everything came from nothing. The better solution is to assume that all matter is infinite and the universe is one infinite loop of big bangs, expansion, and contraction, leading to an infinite number of "big bangs".

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Posted by bfniii

Member since Nov 2005

17840 posts

Posted on 9/21/17 at 7:39 pm to bmy

quote:
Where did the creative force responsible for our universe come from?

ugh. God is the uncaused cause, the prime mover. This is the kind of category mistake i was referring to. You're asking for a "cause" (temporal, spatial, serial, etc) for an uncaused thing. Philosophically speaking, if we know there are contingent things (which there are) then we know something must be necessary.