Are there good reasons to believe that a god exists?

[Jashwell]

"Are there good reasons to believe that a god exists?"

Doesn't seem like much preamble is needed, but expect this largely to be filled (if at all) with arguments in favour of the existence of a God and counter-arguments. (Because the question is not "Are there good reasons to believe that a god does not exist?"). Though if you do think you have a good argument that shows it is reasonable to believe God does not exist, that is also valid.

This question comes up a lot in other threads where various classical arguments (e.g. ontological, axiological, cosmological) have been given in those threads.

If possible, try not to shotgun debate by raising lots of arguments at once. One sound argument should be sufficient.

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 122 by JoeyKnothead]

I only have a comment regarding the following:
"kenblogton wrote:

As I've stated previously, God is eternal so has no beginning".


You said "Yet you don't allow for the universe having existed eternally."

I say 8-15 billion years is finite, not eternal.
kenblogton

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 130 by Jashwell]

God does not come from something and God does not come from nothing because God is eternal uncreated, the logical necessity of avoiding infinite regress, as I've previously stated on numerous occasions.
Why do you bother making statements regarding God's origin when I've demonstrated the illogic of it - which illogic you do not accept, making our continued debate pointless? Let's agree to disagree.
kenblogton

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 130 by Jashwell]

God does not come from something and God does not come from nothing because God is eternal uncreated, the logical necessity of avoiding infinite regress, as I've previously stated on numerous occasions.
Why do you bother making statements regarding God's origin when I've demonstrated the illogic of it - which illogic you do not accept, making our continued debate pointless? Let's agree to disagree.
kenblogton

You seem to skim too much.
As I've said before many times, the whole thing is a red herring.
If you really want to keep avoiding the clear semantic logic, just skip the //// bit. The bit at the end is more important anyway.

////
The logic is after this, but regardless, claiming that "God does not come from nothing" and "God does not come from something" is incoherent. Either he comes from something or he doesn't come from something, the latter being equivalent to nothing.

"God does not come from something and God does not come from nothing"
"God does not come from something" & "God does not come from no thing"
"God does not come from something" & "God does not not come from something"
"God does not come from something" & "God does come from something"

or in other words

"Does God come from something?"
"No. God does not come from something."
> God does not come from something.
> God comes from not something.
> God comes from nothing.
(> God does not come.)
////

Since after 4 or so attempts you seem to have completely ignored this, I'll use your language.
Repeating what you've ignored from last time, the Universe across the entire timeline is eternal.
Obviously time itself is eternal, and finite (backwards at least) - there isn't a time when time doesn't exist, but time does only go back to the big bang (in current consensus cosmological models).

It's analogous to a flip book. I'm watching the flip book and saying "there's an entire book, and it just exists" and you're saying "there's only one page that changes, but where did the one page come from?".

The first page of the flip book/the first frame of the film is the beginning of the flip book/animation and the beginning of the film respectively. Yet it is not the coming into existence of the film or flip book. This shows a clear false dichotomy of assuming that the beginning/initial starting point of time 13.8 billion years ago necessitates it coming into existence.

As I have also pointed out, you repeatedly claim that there was a state "before" the big bang, or that there was an empty state and "then" the Universe. How do you justify the use of the word before, when in your views time does not exist yet?

[agnosticatheist]

[Replying to post 130 by Jashwell]

God does not come from something and God does not come from nothing because God is eternal uncreated, the logical necessity of avoiding infinite regress, as I've previously stated on numerous occasions.
Why do you bother making statements regarding God's origin when I've demonstrated the illogic of it - which illogic you do not accept, making our continued debate pointless? Let's agree to disagree.
kenblogton

Why assume that something which is illogical, actually exists? There is nothing wrong with speculation; maybe it is possible. But to posit, and thus assume, that God is eternally uncreated, which is illogical? Why do that?

I think when we get to the root of it, you want to maintain your God belief, and so you will come up with whatever explanation you have to in order to keep it afloat, no matter how it violates the laws of logic.

All we have to go on is this universe. That's our data. That's our evidence. We don't have anything more than that to go on. Anything else beyond that is mere speculation.

Did we exist pre-Earth, in Sheol? Maybe we did, maybe we didn't, but we don't have any proof of that.

Does Heaven exist? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

Does the Flying Spaghetti Monster exist? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

Does God exist? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.

[Divine Insight]

There is no accepted notion of anything of physical existence prior to the dense singularity/big bang - that is the start of space, time, matter and energy.

This is false. There are accepted notions of things that may have preexisted the singularity/big bang. So you are making a false and uneducated claim about science here.

There is no evidence of anything prior.

There is no evidence that there was nothing prior either. So it's an undecided question. It doesn't favor your conclusions at all.

Your argument stands upon a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the position held by the scientific community.

Regarding God logic, as I've previously stated:
1. The existence of something. The question is Why is there something rather than nothing?

And your questions concerning #1 are very poorly formulated:

1.a. If we accept that something exists, it follows that something cannot come from nothing.

No your conclusion doesn't "follow" from that at all.

1.b. If it were possible for something to come from nothing, we would expect to find examples of such.

Perhaps the universe itself is an example of such.

1.c. However, we find only examples of something coming from something.

Only within the fabric of this spacetime universe which is an entirely different arena.

1.d. Therefore, based on Occams razor, we reject all notions of something coming from nothing. It follows that a creative entity is needed to create something from nothing, whether or not that something changes.

This fails basic logic 101. For one thing Occam's razor doesn't even apply here at all. On the contrary, you apparently don't even understand Occam's razor.

Occam's razor applies to choosing between two theories that actually do explain something. It suggests to choose the simpler theory over a more complex theory since you already have an explanation with less complexity.

You claim to be ruling out the idea that the universe came from nothing as being illogical. Fine.

But then you jump to postulating the existence of an extremely complex God to explain how something could have been created in the first place. That violates Occam's Razor in a major way. On the contrary you could have postulated that some preexisting very simple thing gave rise to the universe. Then Occam's Razor would point to the simpler hypothesis.

However, in this case, neither or these guesses "explains" anything, and therefore neither of these guesses even qualifies for applying Occam's Razor.

Your arguments are neither logical nor scientific.

2. The existence of something which changes. Change implies a beginning. The changed state may also be viewed as the effect of a cause. It is a well-accepted axiom of logic that a cause precedes its effect; that a cause never follows its effect. A creative entity is needed to begin, or cause, a changing something which was preceded by nothing.

But you are yourself in denial of your very own claim that time itself came into being with the Big Bang.

This is especially true of entropic time (i.e. Time that has an arrow from past to future thus allowing for our intuitive notions of cause and effect).

Before the physical universe existed "Time" (change as you have recognized it) may not have been entropic at all. In other words, are very notion of cause and effect may very well be a property of the physical universe and not even exist beyond it.

In fact, we actually have good reasons to believe that quantum time is non-entropic. At the quantum level time may be independent from space and thus behave entirely differently from the fabric of spacetime that constitutes our physical universe.

In fact there are actually theories along these lines. See Paul Davies' "About Time". Also Lee Smolin's "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity". Sean Carroll also touches on these ideas in his book, "From Eternity to Here".

There are actually quite many other scientists who have ideas concerning non-entropic concepts of time. So your arguments are based on a very limited picture of science.

3. The nature of the creative entity. The first two points demonstrate that the creative entity itself cannot be created and cannot change. If this creative entity were created or changing, we get into an infinite regress: this changing creative entity is created by another changing creative entity which is created by another changing creative and so on ad infinitum. Therefore, using Occams razor, we cut off the creative entities at one uncreated and unchanging creative entity.

And unchanging creative entity is an oxymoron. And entity that cannot change cannot create. Creation itself would be a change.

Moreover all of your arguments are based on the unwarranted and unsupportable ideal that the entropic properties of the fabric of physical spacetime could be extrapolated backward to a creator that existed prior to the creation of this very fabric of spacetime in the first place.

I will grant you this much. I can fully understand your arguments based upon your naive approach to demanding that entropic time must have preexisted the universe. But even then as I have pointed out above your proposal of an unchanging creative entity that lives within a framework of entropic time is an oxymoron and thus your theory breaks down anyway,.

So while I understand how you are attempting to think about, in the end it doesn't work anyway.

If we consider the physical universe of space, time, matter and energy as the created something, then we can infer some of the attributes of its non-physical creative entity: non-material, usually referred to as spiritual; not occupying space, usually referred to as invisible, and outside of time, usually referred to as eternal.

But your proposed model already fails because you are inferring entropic time onto this creator (i.e. the principle that cause must always preceded effect). Yet above you had claimed that this God must be unchanging which would be usless if entropic time applied to this God.

You have also now claimed that this God resides "outside of time" which flies in the very face of your entirely argument from the get-go.

Your original argument is based upon the idea that every effect must be preceded by a cause (i.e. you are demanding that entropic time never be violated). But now you are proclaiming that you imagined God entity himself resides "outside of time" thus freeing him from any constraints of cause and effect (the very principle upon which you placed your entire model)

Thus your model is clearly circular and violates the very thing that you claim must always hold true

We can also infer this creative entity is of supreme intelligence or omniscience, given the marvelous design observed in the inception and evolution of the physical universe,

Why? Where do we see any examples of anything that had been designed by a supreme intelligence?

Everything we see in our universe is highly flawed and inferior to what even we can imagine. Humans are an extremely example of a grossly flawed design.

and has supreme power or omnipotence, given accepted scientific theory which states nothing physical or material " matter and energy " can either be created or destroyed. Further knowledge of the nature of the creative entity cannot be inferred directly from the physical, and requires further revelation from the creative entity itself.
kenblogton

Again, you are citing a very elementary view of science that does not correctly reflect modern science. Mathematically it is actually possible to show that the universe could have been created from nothing without violating any conservations laws at all.

You have been taught that energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed. But that only applies to the fabric within the universe. When applied to the universe itself we can give gravity a negative energy values. And there are physical reasons why this actually makes perfect sense. And when we do this we see that energy/matter content of the universe actually sums to zero. Thus suggesting mathematically that the universe could indeed have arisen from absolutely nothing with no violation of the laws of physics.

Evidently your not up to date on the knowledge of modern physics.

~~~~~

Finally, as I had stated before. Even if your arguments had made any sense, you'd still be a very long way from supporting Hebrew Mythology.

At this point, even if your arguments were true the results could just as easily support the God of Taoism, the Goddess of Wicca, or any number of other religions.

But in truth, your arguments are actually grossly flawed.

[mwtech]

[Replying to post 122 by JoeyKnothead]

I only have a comment regarding the following:
"kenblogton wrote:

As I've stated previously, God is eternal so has no beginning".


You said "Yet you don't allow for the universe having existed eternally."

I say 8-15 billion years is finite, not eternal.
kenblogton

Thus, confirming that you don't allow for the universe to be eternal. If you are claiming that the universe is finite, you are not allowing for the universe having existed eternally.

[mwtech]

[Replying to post 125 by mwtech]

You said "So to summarize,

You make all the claims you made before even though they have all been refuted, but offer no actual evidence to the contrary, and are forfeiting the debate?
So we can assume that you have no evidence and you are just giving us your opinion."

I say none of my assertions has been refuted. To summarize.
1. Something comes from something, and there are no instances of something coming from nothing.
2. God of necessity has no beginning, so as to avoid an infinite regress.
If there are refutations, please - let's see them.
kenblogton

"1. Everything that has a beginning comes from something."

This has been refuted by pointing out that this is unknowable, seeing as we haven't observed anywhere close to everything that had a beginning. Since we only have data for that which we have observed, we con only apply this to that which we can observe. We cannot observe the beginning of the universe so we cannot apply the data as long as we have not observed all the data available.

"2. If something does not have a beginning, it is eternal."

This is not necessarilly true. This only means that it didn't have a beginning. For it to be truly eternal, it must also have no end. Since time is still going on we can not say for sure what is eternal and what is not. This isn't neccesarily relevant to the origin of the universe, but it is another example of pretending to know something one cannot know.

3. The physical universe had a beginning some 8-15 billion years ago.

Evidence suggests the physical universe in the state that it is now began around that time. I italicize because it would be very arrogant to have such certainty about an event that we are unable to physically observe. There is no way to know if there was a universe of some form or another before this one. Because time began at the Big Bang, the dense singularity (if that is indeed what there was) would have quite litterally been there since before the beginning of time, if you can even imagine such a paradoxical concept as before time. What I am getting at is, yet again, you seem to posses an unhealthy level about certainty about something which you cannot know.

4. God is eternal - no beginning - as the infinite regress logic demands, so God comes from neither something or nothing - God is, as the Bible indicates in Exodus 3:14.

Firstly, the bible holds no water in a debate where we haven't even established that there is a god, let alone your God. Secondly, it is quite impossible to have not come from something and simultaniously not come from no thing. You either come from a thing, or you come from no thing. There isn't some gray area here. if God did not come from some thing, then he came from no thing. This does indeed cause an infinite regress of what created God, but that doesn't mean that he neither came from something or no thing. It means we should eliminate God as a credible hypothesis at the present time.
So there we have even more refutations of all your points, put in what I hope is an ever clearer manner.

[instantc]

"1. Everything that has a beginning comes from something."

This has been refuted by pointing out that this is unknowable, seeing as we haven't observed anywhere close to everything that had a beginning.

Logic dictates that everything that has a beginning comes from something, it's almost tautologous.

[mwtech]

"1. Everything that has a beginning comes from something."

This has been refuted by pointing out that this is unknowable, seeing as we haven't observed anywhere close to everything that had a beginning.

Logic dictates that everything that has a beginning comes from something, it's almost tautologous.

Logic is not some sentient being that I can call up and ask how his train of thought works in this subject, so you'll have to elaborate for me. How can logic tell us that everything comes from something? We have seen probably less than 1% of everything and we don't really know for sure where most of it came from.

[Divine Insight]

"1. Everything that has a beginning comes from something."

This has been refuted by pointing out that this is unknowable, seeing as we haven't observed anywhere close to everything that had a beginning.

Logic dictates that everything that has a beginning comes from something, it's almost tautologous.

What's logic?

We do our best to make sense of the world in which we live. Our ideas of logic are based upon our intuitive experiences. Our entire system of logical formalism is based precisely on this foundation.

We have already discovered things that make no logical sense to us. In fact, we had to readjust what makes logical sense to us several times. Relativity is a prime example. We still don't have a full understanding of very common things such as time itself. If you think you understand time you probably aren't even considering relativity and how time can dilate. The idea that there can be no such thing as an absolute universal "now" boggles the minds of the greatest scientists.

Those of us who have studied relativity now understand this in terms of an absolute fabric of spacetime which itself is malleable. It's not only malleable in space but it's also malleable in time. These things are interconnected in ways that are not the least bit intuitive.

For example when you are standing in a gravitational field time passes more slowly for your head than it does for your feet. This is neither intuitive nor logical by our everyday understanding of either of these concepts.

When we look into the quantum world of the very small we even see far more bizarre behavior that absolutely defies what we have come to know as "logic".

So trying to prove that a God exists using our notions of logic, is actually quite misguided. Reality may indeed be far stranger than we are even capable of comprehending. It may not even be remotely "logical" based upon our intuition of what seems logical to us.

Fortunately for scientists logical formalism itself is malleable and therefore we can adjust how we define logic as required to fit the universe as more information is discovered.

In fact, we have already seen this in mathematics on several fronts. The most popular being the three different types of geometries. At first glance it appeared that only Euclidean Geometry is logical. But now we know that there are at least three geometries that are logical. Euclidean, Spherical, and Hyperbolic. All of which yield different logical results.

I should add at this time that these are only when we consider 3 dimensions. Add more dimensions and things can even become weirder. And scientists are now suspecting that our physical universe may even have as many as 11 dimensions. This will allow for "logical" geometries that become even more "illogical" in terms of what we consider to be intuitively logical.


You say:

Logic dictates that everything that has a beginning comes from something, it's almost tautologous.

But actually logic doesn't dictate anything. Logic is simply the end formalism that works best to describe the world around us.

The universe doesn't need to obey our logical formalism. On the contrary, we need to keep tweaking our logical formalism to keep up with describing the universe.

We never say to the universe, "You can't behave that way because it's illogical".

Quantum Mechanics is a prime example.

The universe behaves however it wants. It's up to us to reformulate our logical formalism to deal with reality, not the other way around.

People used to think that it was perfectly logical that the universe was eternal. In fact, when they discovered that it actually had a beginning this was quite a shock to many people. Many people argued that it is illogical that the universe had a beginning.

In truth are logical formalism doesn't even make any absolute statements like that. There is no way that we could have figured out via logic alone that the universe had to have a beginning or always existed. We would have accepted either case as being "logical".

Why? Because we have to start somewhere when constructing our logical formalism.

Where do you think logical formalism came from?

We invented it.

We didn't find it laying in the sand on some beach.

A lot of people seem to think that both logic and mathematics were simply handed to us by some God. And that both of these formalisms are absolutely perfect and infallible.

Nothing could be further from the truth.