Thoughts on an anti-"First Cause" syllogism?

[Aridas]

How about this as a reply?:

God contains the universe
God is more than the universe
God interacts with the universe
There has never been a time when God has not interacted with the universe
God can control all events in the universe
The universe is bounded in time and space
God is not bounded in time and space
God could destroy the universe if God wished
The universe (or anything in it) could not destroy God
We (in the universe), are limited in our understanding by the spatial and temporal boundaries of the universe
God's knowledge has no such limitations

Therefore, in many senses God has priority over the universe, and this state of affairs is what 'creation' is properly meant to refer to, in the religious sense. There simply is no human word outside of scripture that comes close to pointing towards all these attributes of God's relationship to creation, perhaps 'ontological priority', or 'transcendent', would be the closest options. This is what is truly meant by 'holy'.

The biggest problem with this is that, except for "We (in the universe), are limited in our understanding by the spatial and temporal boundaries of the universe," and "The universe is bounded in time and space," all of those premises are based on nothing more than empty assertion and thus, can be dismissed out of hand. Even they should be dealing with "our universe" and not "the universe" for accuracy, though, and the latter might actually be an inaccurate representation of the matter.

There are numerous other fatal flaws as well, but there's no need to get into them when that first problem completely destroys the attempt.

Admittedly, though, I'm curious about what human word in scripture actually says what you claim, given that you heavily imply that there is one.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The biggest problem with this is that, except for "We (in the universe), are limited in our understanding by the spatial and temporal boundaries of the universe," and "The universe is bounded in time and space," all of those premises are based on nothing more than empty assertion and thus, can be dismissed out of hand.

This.

Woo slingers are focusing too much on what do know and not enough on what we don't.

We aren't limited to thinking things at random just because we can't reach some impossible level of artificially manufactured metaphysic certainty.

It's why I truly consider "But we can't know for sure" to be intellectualism distilled down to it's truest form.

 

[Snarf]

Time without space?
How could anyone know that?Where would you put your clock?

That was my point. But it seems some on here already know it. Careful, you'll be branded an anti-intellectual if you keep asking all these questions.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

How about this as a reply?:

God contains the universe
God is more than the universe
God interacts with the universe
There has never been a time when God has not interacted with the universe
God can control all events in the universe
The universe is bounded in time and space
God is not bounded in time and space
God could destroy the universe if God wished
The universe (or anything in it) could not destroy God
We (in the universe), are limited in our understanding by the spatial and temporal boundaries of the universe
God's knowledge has no such limitations

Therefore, in many senses God has priority over the universe, and this state of affairs is what 'creation' is properly meant to refer to, in the religious sense. There simply is no human word outside of scripture that comes close to pointing towards all these attributes of God's relationship to creation, perhaps 'ontological priority', or 'transcendent', would be the closest options. This is what is truly meant by 'holy'.

The others have already said the biggest problems, but here's one more, and it's important too: which God? For example, in that list, you just more or less described Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth.

One thing that is starting to annoy me with arguments for God, is that they don't even support the whole claim. Fallacious as that support is, it's not even a tiny part of what was actually claimed.

And it's actually important, because it actually makes the whole argument useless and pointless.

If I told you, for example, "everything has a cause, including cherry trees, therefore someone must have planted the cherry tree in my back yard, therefore it was the Iga ninja clan", you'd probably go, "whoa, back up a little, how do you know which ninja clan?"

But that's exactly the argument people make about God. Kalam in its original form and intent, what it actually supports (fallaciously, mind you), "SOMETHING must have created the universe", but where it actually goes from there is "... and therefore it's Allah." Not just any God, mind you, but specifically the one who dictated the Quran and all. Well, how the <bleep> do you know that last bit?

Seriously. Even if I were to get enough brain damage to accept Kalam, the "therefore it's <insert very specific god>" part would still be unsupported.

Essentially, the monstrosity of the claim is that it boils down to "bla, bla, bla, therefore something created the universe, and therefore you'll go to hell if you have buttseks with another guy." Well, how the hell do you get from the former to the latter? How do you know it's not the god of gay buttseks that made the universe? For all we know, his first attempt could have been Adam and Steve, before grudgingly acknowledging that they need women too in order to reproduce.

Exactly which part of the "there must be a first cause" argument, also supports the "and he hates gays, and he hates premarital sex, and he wants us to bomb the Muslims, and he doesn't want women priests, etc" parts of the specific God that's then squeezed into that first-cause shaped hole?

And that is what makes the argument useless and pointless. Even if I were to accept such first cause arguments, what it actually says is that *A* god created the universe, but not which. You don't know what it wants, what's his plan. You don't know if it wants anything at all, or has a plan at all. It could just as well be just an experiment in seeing how the whole universe evolves with this set of rules, rather than caring what each individual of sentient life form that evolved in that universe does when it's naked.

What do you do to please a god that's only supported by "something must have created the universe"? Is there ANYTHING you can do to please it? How would you know? Exactly what part of that is supported by the first cause argument?

 

[JoeMorgue]

And therein lies the problem at its core.

The arguments for "God" work just as well if you put Zeus, Odin, Cthulhu or Q from Star Trek in them.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I was gonna say, 'except those who presuppose the Bible to be true, because you can't really go: Odin is the one true god, because the Bible says so." But then it occured to me that then you'd go by their holy sagas instead of the bible, and it would still work.

So, yeah, you nailed it.

 

[tsig]

That was my point. But it seems some on here already know it. Careful, you'll be branded an anti-intellectual if you keep asking all these questions.

It's no asking the questions that gets one branded here it's ignoring the answers.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Like I said, the universe was created by the tantrum of a giant cosmic baby. Now-- prove me wrong!

 

[Daald]

Isn't that a tad contradictory?

You say that X must be before Y yet X does not fit such a relation.

Yes, I know the issues with what I said. I was basically invoking a metaverse that creates universes. I know the argument is silly but was aiming for fantasy to torpedo fantasy

 

[Daald]

Actually, it seems to me like you're the one who asserts that there was a previous "thing that went bang". Except that's not what physics says happened there. The only "thing that went bang" is our universe. It's not like some bomb went bang and that created a universe. The universe itself is what went bang.

Now maybe there was some way that that singularity formed (because essentially that's what we're talking about: a zero size thing, before it started expanding, i.e., a singularity), that would start expanding as the universe, or maybe not. Maybe it just always existed. Or maybe there was no time for it to exist in.

But there was nothing else that went bang there. The whole bang is just the universe starting expanding.

Essentially you're just squeezing in your own first cause, only instead of it being "God" it's some "thing that went bang".

So rejecting stuff based on gross misunderstanding is not very relevant.

But more importantly, you don't seem to understand how the burden of proof works, or what "possibly" means.

1. For any claim of the form "X exists", you get the burden of proof, fair and square.

We don't know of a "thing that went bang" before the universe. Even skipping over the fact that it would involve measuring something that happened before time, a nonsense right there, we can't even see close to when time-space began, because we'd need to somehow see through the moment the universe cooled enough and became transparent. There are no photons around from the time the universe was opaque to photons.

But if you think there was a "thing that went bang", you get to show it.

2. "Possibly" disproving something is not the same as actually disproving it. Especially when that in turn is depending on something "possibly" existing, but not having been shown to actually exist.

It's like saying that you could possibly have a secret bank account, which could possibly disprove that you're not a tax-dodging criminal. Or that I could possibly have a warp-capable spacecraft, which could possibly disprove the impossibility of FTL flight. So what? "Possibly" doesn't mean anything.

You can't build a theory or reject it, based on just being able to imagine stuff, because that's all that "possibly" says there.

I know this. "Possibly" was me pulling something out of my butt to be considered by others with the things they pulled out of theirs.

When I rejected the second proposition it was not based on what I had said previously. I rejected it because of your first item. He had not provided the proof for it and simply asserted it.