Dear Atheists/Non-Believers

It’s hard for you keep up with the lies. Post 313 you denied it. And I don’t see your original post with it maybe I missed it. I think you edited it after people told you how dumb it was.

But now from saying I didn’t say that to admitting you did and now saying you never denied it. Tiring stuff.

How about this: You say a lot of shit about the existence of God that doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny, but damned if you won’t try hard to pretend otherwise by dodging or lying :lying_face: :lying_face: :lying_face:

Now we are getting somewhere. Nothing cannot have a form since it doesn’t exist, literally. Even having a name for ‘that which isn’t’ is an oxymoron in itself.

Well your talking about the universe, I am merely talking about existence. Now the universe, in so much as we know came from the Big Bang, which came from an infinitesimal, infinitely hot, atomic singularity. In terms of physical existence is reasonable to ask where that dot came from, and where what create that which created the dot, came from. What we cannot do, is plunge into an infinite regress. An infinite regress is necessarily circular, hence why it’s necessary to avoid it. The only way to avoid the infinite regress is if something exists uncaused, that initially caused something into being, bring about the causal chain (or web if you prefer) in which we now live.
It’s not an assumption in that it’s the only conclusion which logically fits the premises.

Don’t hold your breath. You won’t find a source. I’m sure you will see copy and pasted arguments about the existence but even those people rarely say things like the existence of God has been proven

Post 313? I’ll go look at it.

Well, I did say that there. My bad. I had no idea what you were talking about. I made a mistake.

1 Like

Carl Jung would…
Valid Deductive Arguments are sometimes referred to as ‘proofs’. No most people do not hold my position of certainty, most theists hold the position of ‘more probable than not’. I don’t see the point of the latter.

And Carl Jung would be incorrect. The existence of God has not been proven. Holding the position of more probable than not completely makes sense. Holding the position of this is undeniable is stupid and bullshit.

And we are worlds from going there to belief in an all knowing all powerful and all good god with heaven hell and all that other glorious stuff.

It’s risky and it brings a lot of tension and derision. But I don’t believe in fence sitting. At a certain point, after an ample amount of study one should make a choice. And I have made mine. The counter arguments ask good questions but disprove nothing. And based on that and personal experience I have chosen certainty because my days of uncertainty have passed. It’s based both on solid logical arguments and personal experience which I cannot argue or prove but are nonetheless real.
I say proofs exist in as much as proofs in mathematics exist. Deductively the arguments are solid. The objections either cannot be answered or do not disprove the arguments. Hence, I am certain.
People can disagree with all kinds of propositions, but that does not mean the propositions are not true.
Consensus does not make a proposition or argument, true. It just means people agree. And I don’t need people to agree, I need things to be true.

Nope, nice leap though. That is an assumption that makes your premises true. YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT TO BE TRUE. You cannot prove that to be the case. If you do, I’m pretty sure you will win the nobel prize in astrophysics.

This is your understanding of “nothing”, but we’re not dealing with a layman’s understanding of the world when we get into quantum mechanics, which I barely understand. Is “nothing” just a singularity? Are you applying your understanding of how time functions to the creation event? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, because you cannot prove what you are saying. You jump from not knowing to assuming it was God who caused it. That is your assumption, but it is not proven.

Yes but this is where certainty falls apart. The objections can’t be answered so it is impossible to disprove the arguments. Because the (perfectly valid) objections can’t be proven doesn’t mean they aren’t correct.

It all comes back to the impossible of prove god doesn’t exist. If someone is saying well because you can’t prove he doesn’t exist that must mean he does then I guess that can provide certainty if one wants to.

This is what I am so confused about from pat’s reasoning. It’s very obvious this is a flawed way to logically get certainty. No respectable well-reasoned person would be certain about something just because the opposite can’t be proven. There is nothing wrong with not knowing. Hence you know, faith (if that’s what you want to believe in).

It’s not dealt with in Astrophysics, though there are physicist trying to examine what caused the big bang, where we get Inflation Theory and things like the multiverse. But it’s a philosophical proposition. It’s a deductive argument, it deals with metaphysics, not specifically physics. In the argument from contingency, not other conclusion is possible. You can argue the premises may not be true, but the conclusion is solid.
It’s not my creation, otherwise I would be collecting the Nobel prize.

I won’t paste a wall of words, I will just give the link, but I hope you will honestly consider it. It’s not that long:

Um, I hope you know QM well. I presented this question to one of the more prominent Physicists in the world right now, Dr. Lawrence Kruass. I sent him an email asking the very same thing. He stated there is never a point where there is truly nothing. I was asking him about Null Theory. I will try to find the email I know I kept it as I was gobsmacked he actually responded.

Nothing is lack of being. Nothing is what isn’t. In Krauss’s book the ‘Universe from Nothing’ he says the Universe can come from the laws of physics. The laws of physics is something not nothing. And it begs the question, how did the laws of physics come to be?
Now physically, we make statements that ‘There is nothing in there’, or ‘I found nothing of the sort’, but in philosophy speak, the laws of physics is something, as it an imaginary triangle as is anything that can be conceived and yet does not have a physical presence. Nothing mean, not anything. There’s really no way to discuss nothing. A void is not nothing, a quantum vacuum is not nothing. Nothing is not.

It depends on the argument in question. For say the Kalam Cosmological Argument or Aristotle’s version, people have brought up the objection of time. That time perhaps does not exist. This would certainly falsify the causal claim that the effect follows a given cause. But nobody has been able to prove time doesn’t really exist. Further, stronger arguments, the strongest, being the argument from contingency, does not use time. It uses causation as a set of properties that makes a thing possible to exist, physically or metaphysically.
The time objection was duly noted and while time was neither proven nor disproved, we have an argument that takes time out of the picture so the objection cannot be raised.

So the other objections have to do with causation. Problem is, causation is part and parcel to existence. Do you have an objection to causation? Hume tried and rightly admitted he painted himself into a corner with it. It was bonkers for scientific understanding, but did nothing to his original goal of proving there must be a 3rd element to causation we are not aware of.

If I wanted to do that, I would just have to say “God exists and you cannot prove He does not”. But that’s not what I am doing. I am letting you examine the evidence provided by legitimate arguments. Being that most are deductive, you have to work in the world of metaphysics.
But the basic question behind all of this “Why is there something (or anything) rather than nothing?” deserves an answer and that’s what these men (and women) worked on.

Oh, so physicists have figured out what happened before the big bang?? Damn, should be a nobel prize this year then.

Exactly, your premises are making assumptions that cannot be proven.

Yeah LOL at that statement. If you accept the unproven assumptions then the conclusion is solid!

No, Dr. Krauss’s theory is one of many and it’s just a theory. They are very far from figuring it out. If it’s even possible to figure it out with certainty. What he was trying to do in a legalistic sense was to provide an alternate theory to the Universe’s cause to existence. Reasonable doubt if you will.
But I would argue, it takes just as much faith if not more to believe that an infinitely dense, infinitely energetic ball the size of an atom mysteriously appeared out of no where for no reason, then it does to believe in a Creator of existence itself. But hell, existence as we understand it, may be a sham for all we know. We could all be minds in a petri dish imagining the reality we presume to exist. Ether way you still have two problems, something exists and something made it so. It cannot just exist as that argument would be circular.
I can hear the counter ‘well where did God come from then?’. The arguments actually do not deal with what God is or His/ Her’s it’s origins. It’s simply not addressed. However, by definition an Uncaused-cause cannot be caused. Hence, there is no origin. The property of being caused, does not apply to anything that is uncaused. So a question such as, ‘What caused God?’ cannot be asked, it’s nonsensical. It’s like asking ‘why isn’t blue, green?’

The premises are not assumptions. Contingency can and has been proven. If we take an empirical example that one can say most agree on, for an atom to exist, you need a proton a neutron and an electron as well as positive and negative charge. If any of those elements do not exist, you have no atom. Hence, the atom’s existence is contingent on the properties that make it up. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find anything within your experience that isn’t contingent upon something else for it’s existence.
If such a thing were to exist, then you could not know about it. Knowing about it would mean said thing caused something, a.k.a. you knowing about it. And it’s impossible to have more than one Uncaused-cause, because the two “things” would necessarily contradict each other, violating the law of non-contradiction and hence being false.
The other main premise is existence. It’s impossible to argue that nothing exists. It could be we’re duped to the actual reality of existence, but something has to exist to even ask the question.
So surmise, in very general terms the arguments rely on two very solid premises, something exists and existence is contingent (caused) by something.
I am not sure you can find more solid premises than that, save mathematical laws which are metaphysical in origin. Hence, even math is contingent…

The last thing I want to address is the terseness of the thread… I have no cause nor reason to be angry or feel any negative emotion towards y’all and for my contribution to that, I apologize. I do not wish to continue the conversation in such a tone. People on the defensive dig in their heels and it is counter-productive towards an actually productive conversation.
If you wish to continue in a non-combative way, I will oblige with responses when I can (seem to be very busy these days). But I don’t want to continue if the conversation is going to combative. I will leave it up to you. I will play nice, or I won’t play.

1 Like

Wow! It’s one thing to say that you believe something simply out of faith. But this is a whole new level of delusion. Just because we do no know what God is does not mean you get to label it an uncaused-cause, just because.

Exactly, so if the universe is uncaused your argument falls apart.

They are until they are proven, which you cannot do

You have proof? Another nobel prize for you then.

This isn’t how it works, especially for the quantum world. Proving something else has a cause and therefore your assumption is proven for all cases just doesn’t work. I could easily make an argument for how time works and apply it to a solution. That makes sense in our world we are familiar with and, we are all familiar with the concept of time. But that would be incredibly flawed, as time does not behave in the same way in the quantum world.

The universe is the most caused thing of all things that exists. You’re looking at it two dimensionally. You have to expand the way you look at causation. What causes the universe? What it’s made of. Matter, energy and the space in between. Without those properties you have no universe. So the universe is in fact caused.

What makes a thing what it is, is contingency. Do I have proof, yes, existence. Anything from a pencil to a neutron star, to a thought or idea, to a concept to mathematical and physical facts are all contingent on what they consist of. I don’t get the nobel prize, this is already been done, hundreds of years ago.

You don’t understand the quantum world then. We had a quantum physicist on these forums called Dr. Matt, and we had a long discussion about the quantum world and causality. In his conclusion, He stated plainly, that though much of the effects are not well understood, it still follows the standard causal model. QM is not an exception to the rule, it follows the rules of nature just like every thing else. It may have it’s own set, but it’s no evidence of causelessness.
What isn’t known abut QM is not an example of causelessness.
If you guys are into looking back into these forums, then look at the discussions between Dr. Matt and myself. They are in one of many “God” threads.

EDIT: Grammar edits

It’s the conclusion of an ancient philosophical argument. It’s not done will-nilly. This is well understood stuff.