HISTORY:
From The God Hypothesis
Concerning this topic I put forth the following:
I followed this with :If the universe did begin, it must have had a cause. Nothing comes from nothing. If nothing happened or existed, then nothing would be the result. Obviously something happened because we are here. So something changed. Changes require causes.
This cause had to have certain requirements.
1) It must have been space less or at the very least outside of the confines of this universe.
2) It must have been timeless. Time it is shown by Einstein and others after him directly interacts with matter and space inside this universe. It is a factor which exists inside this universe. If there was no universe then there would be nothing to interact with. Hence the cause of the universe must be timeless.
First you need to define a person. Then define the start of the person.
then you can identify the cause of that start. What you have done is list a series of results of different causes. But each of these steps had a cause which allowed it to be so. Likewise each of these steps would not have occurred except that something took place. Without that something, the step would not have occurred.
Lets say (because I am personally against abortion) that a person exists after conception. Before conception it is not a person but rather two sets of genes.
The genes come together and combine DNA which begins the growth process.
Strictly speaking the combining of the DNA is what caused the person to exist.
Quote:
Why must the existence of the universe have a cause? I'm not particularly well versed on universe theory, but I am aware that there is a line of thought whereby this universe is one in a long line of universes that expand, collapse, expand, collapse. Do they need a cause?
I am familiar with this theory. It is no longer accepted by scientists in every secular area of society (not to mention Christian).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_theory
To this I received the following replies:Each step has a cause all the way back to the formation of the universe. So we are back at the "first cause".
I am making one assumption. That the universe did have a cause. However I am making this assumption based on 100% of the observable data ever collected or witnessed by mankind since our existence. There has never been an occurrence which did not have a cause.
If the universe was uncaused, and yet began, then you must explain how nothing changed, and yet the universe changed. It is a logical impossibility. Either the universe (or something which became the universe) changed, or nothing happened. But we know something happened, so something changed. Changes require causes. And around we go.
achilles12604 wrote:Cogitoergosum wrote:
What caused God to exist?
Or are you going to invent a special plea for GOD.
Now if the universe began to exist and thus needed a cause, this cause had to meet certain criteria.
Criteria that you will invent to fit GOD.
Duke of Vandals wrote:Cogitoergosum wrote:
What caused God to exist?
Or are you going to invent a special plea for GOD.
Cogi has asked an important question one which Christians do create special pleas for.
Goat Wrote:
You then declare God to be the one thing that 'always' existed, thereby giving
God an attribute that is not given to anything else. Because you say evertying was 'caused' to exist but god, you are using the logical fallacy of "Special Pleading".
From http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacie ... ading.html
Quote:
Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:
You are giving the special attribute to God of 'not being caused', and evertying else to 'have a cause'. There is no reason to do that, except to try to 'define' god into place.
So lets investigate the possibility of me using a special pleading in my logic.
Using Goats link to special pleading fallacies we get the definition of special pleading.
Description of Special Pleading
Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:
1. Person A accepts standard(s) S and applies them to others in circumtance(s) C.
2. Person A is in circumstance(s) C.
3. Therefore A is exempt from S.
The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason for his exemption. That this sort of reasoning is fallacious is shown by the following extreme example:
1. Barbara accepts that all murderers should be punished for their crimes.
2. Although she murdered Bill, Barbara claims she is an exception because she really would not like going to prison.
3. Therefore, the standard of punishing murderers should not be applied to her.
This is obviously a blatant case of special pleading. Since no one likes going to prison, this cannot justify the claim that Barbara alone should be exempt from punishment.
Using their breakdown I will hence forth apply it in this manner:
G = God
U = Universe
CTC = criteria for cause
The claim made by these three non-theists is that I am using special pleading in reference to God.
The case I made about the universe is that anything which begins to exist must have a cause. Despite goat's demands that I prove this, it is a universally accepted scientific theory. If goat wants to debate this universally accepted fact then start a thread on it and I would like Goat to back up his demand for proof with at least ONE scientific source (author, magazine, anything at all) which agrees with him claim that something can in fact come from nothing and that things spontaneously occur without any reason what so ever.
Moving on with THIS topic, I made the following claims:
1) Anything which begins to exist, must have a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore the universe must have a cause.
So long as my one assumption (anything that begins to exist must have a cause) is correct, this logic follows along correctly. So there is no fallacy here.
Next I wrote that the cause for the universe must have several attributes.
(disclaimer: before beginning I would like to point out that I am aware of the multiverse theory and that this totally unproven theory allows for the cause of THIS universe to be within another space and time. But then the problem is simply moved out one more universe so for the sake of moving the topic at hand along, I am going to assume only this universe exists)
1) It must be space less. By this I mean it must be outside the confines of the universe it created. This is because the cause of the universe can not depend on the universe's existence. Since the universe (remember my disclaimer) encompasses all matter, anything without anything, (no matter, space,etc) can be defined as space less.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_a ... 0902a.html
2) It must be timeless since without reference to space, time is meaningless. Einsteins theories show us the direct correlation of time and matter.http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/as ... AST224.HTM
Author: janette l gubala
What is beyond space?
Response #: 1 of 1
Author: asmith
Nothing! Either space goes on forever (is infinite) or it comes back around
in some kind of closed loop, but the way we understand space right now, it
is impossible for it to have any edges, and so there is no direction you
could point and say "50 yards in that direction space ends". Since there
are not any ends, there is not really any way to understand what "beyond"
means. But there could be other things that "exist" that are somehow
outside our own universe - parallel universes!
Now the universe does not fit these two criteria for obvious reasons. Therefore going back to my original point, the universe (U) can not fit the criteria for the cause of the universe (CFC).
Christian theology presents a God which does fit these criteria however. We portray him as both outside space and timeless. Also the design of God came BEFORE the criteria for creation.
So the argument we are just designing God to fit the criteria isn't valid since God pre-dates the criteria.
We can not be molding the criteria to fit God because the criteria for the cause of the universe is fixed. For example I could not make the claim that being 5'5" was a criteria for the cause of the universe because it invalidates the logical order of things because for anything to be 5'5" it must have something to compare to and it must already exist, both of which are impossible without the universe's existence.
So we Christians present a God whose characterizes were in existence before the question about the criteria for cause of the universe was asked. It is just a happy coincidence that the criteria of God and the criteria for the cause of the universe are the same. (or is it?)
IS MY ARGUMENT SPECIAL PLEADING?
This is the key sentence in deciding if I am guilty of special pleading or not. The standards I have set for the universe and deny for God fall into my first premise:The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason for his exemption.
[center]Whatever begins to exist requires a cause[/center]
I say that this premise DOES apply to the universe and it DOES NOT apply to God.
Here is my reasoning for this.
Why it does apply to the universe:
Within this universe, every experience and experiment conducted by mankind shows that if nothing happens, then nothing happens. If you do not plant a seed, then a tree will not grow. However if a tree does grow, then a seed MUST have been planted. There is no alternative. Since this rule is consistent throughout the entire universe, it is logical to think that this same law applies to the universe itself. In addition to this we have evidence of such a beginning. We have discovered the once hypothetical background radiation which would have followed an explosive beginning to the universe. Red light shift indicates that all other galaxies are moving away from us. This would be very likely if the universe did have an explosive beginning but unlikely if the universe always was.
Why it does not apply to God:
Did God begin to exist? Scientifically there is no answer. The only answer can be found in theology and that answer is no.
It is important to remember here that I am not changing or reinventing God so he fits with the criteria of this argument. The idea that God was eternal dates back to at least the writing of genesis which is well before the BCE./CE switch. So I am not fitting the facts to God, not am I fitting God to the facts. They are both the same.
Once again the CFC of the universe is fixed. If the universe began (which is an accepted analysis of science), then its cause must fall within certain guidelines, which I established. The fact that the God described in the bible happens to fit these guidelines is not the product of theology but rather of coincidence.
CONCLUSION:
With my reasons for applying the criteria to the universe and not to God in mind I can safely say that I have not committed the logical fallacy of special pleading.
The only case in which I would have done this is if God was supposed to be held to the same standards as everything else within this universe. From Goat's source :
[center]2. Person A is in circumstance(s) C.[/center]
But the God of Christianity does not fit into the circumstances applied to the universe. The laws of the universe don't apply to God simply due to his nature.
Looking at this from the other side, if the laws of this universe applied to God, then god could not have been the first cause because he would be dependent on the universe. But then we are still left with the problem of the cause of the universe.
In essence what I am trying to say in as lengthy manner as possible is that whatever caused the universe, IS NOT bound by the laws of this universe. Therefore, I can not be guilty of special pleading because person A (God) is not in the circumstances described for and applied to the universe itself.
Id also say Free Will but that is a whole different debate I have had with Bugmaster. Then we could look at things like virtual particles, and quantum fluctuations. Science does not stand against uncaused events. It only maintains certain principles should not be violated like conservation of energy, momentum etc. The principle that you can't get something form nothing is neither a logical principle or a physical law. A virtual particle can pop into existence and travel no further than its Compton wavelength before it pops out of existence. It can do this because Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows the law of conservation of energy to be suspended for the probability of duration T and Energy E that when multiplied are not greater than h. So here science applies principles that limit a behaviour, but not the cause of the behaviour.
