Are religions manmade and natural or supernaturally based?

And thus ends the debate. Thanks for being such a magnanimous loser ICANT.

If time did not exist there was no time in which one can exist in, in order to wait 'until' time existed. If time's existence starts at the Big Bang, then there was no before it.Therefore, there are no points in time, when there are no points in time. There are no points in space where there are no points in space.If we are working in a General Relativity sense. If we presume time did not begin at the Big Bang then we enter the world of mathematically consistent theories, mathematically inconsistent theories and religious speculation.There are attempts to pick apart the tiniest of pieces of evidence to see if anything is empirically consistent in any interesting way with any of the theories - but not much we can have any degree of confidence in has emerged.You can, as many have, {insert God here}.As you have argued however, your own construction of supernatural essentially means 'anything is possible'. Which is another way of saying 'I don't know anything'*. Which is fine, but it is probably better to be direct.* Actually it means 'I can't know anything', but I was being charitable.

Does it? There is no point in time where there was no point in time such that you can ever say 'time did not exist, at that point in time'. It would be, for obvious reasons, gibberish. My point exactly. Therefore your statement that

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That means time could not exist until the universe began to exist.

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Is gibberish. Or as I said:If time did not exist there was no time in which one can exist in, in order to wait 'until' time existed. If time's existence starts at the Big Bang, then there was no before it.

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Therefore, there are no points in time, when there are no points in time. There are no points in space where there are no points in space.

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If we are working in a General Relativity sense. If we presume time did not begin at the Big Bang then we enter the world of mathematically consistent theories, mathematically inconsistent theories and religious speculation. In General Relativity: Time and Space and Energy {aka the Universe} just exist as a four dimensional entity. It doesn't have anything that happened before it as the four dimensional object does not sit within a temporal dimension.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

There is no mechanism. There is no cause. Nope, there was never a when there was no point in time and there is not a place where there are no points in space. There was never non-existence. It's simple really, you made up the problem so I can dismiss it with equal ease.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Everything. Wrong. That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed likewise.But seriously, think about it. You are saying the universe existed for a billionth of a second before it existed. Gibberish. Wrong. You started wrong. Let's try again: The universe exists and time is bounded, at least in the past. Correct. The universe exists. It is in four dimensions. It does not not exist. This is not circular reasoning, its ontology.My point is that there isn't a Gap of Non-existence to squeeze your God into. You'll have to find somewhere else, or try to butcher a different cosmology model.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Turnabout is fair play.The problem is that many supernaturalists proclaim that there must be something that exists BEFORE the universe. They propose God. Then they deny that the argument they used can be used again to say 'there must be something that exists BEFORE God'.Then they argue 'But God does not existing within a temporal frame, he transcends time and space.', while being unable to accept that's what I'm saying about the universe. I don't propose eternally existing matter. In the model in discussion, matter has only been around for about 13 billion years. I don't know why adding an extra entity that requires an explanation can possibly be regarded as less complicated. By adding God into the discussion, not only are you not solving any of the problems you claim to {you just push them back} but you are raising more and more questions.

Everywhere. Yes. It has a finite past. I think that leaves us with less room for equivocation, so let's use that. The concept of 'preceding' the universe makes no sense in light of the fact that there is nothing except the universe. The universe exists. It has a finite past. That's it. There was no points in space before there were points in space. There are no points in time other than that which is in the universe. There is no requirement that non existence precedes it, indeed there is a requirement that THERE ARE NO points in time before it.No preceding state to the universe, no time no space before it. It just is. Well, no. There are more than two possibilities. Many of them don't require a supernatural power. But let's stick with getting you to understand my godless universe before we start worrying about other possibilities.

Of course it did. Space and Time existed. I mean that time has at least one end, at the Big Bang. It exists for all time. Which has a finite past.abe: Of course, but where and when is this God? The energy in the universe has existed for all of time, including a billionth of a second away from the start of time. The expansion is described by GR.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Your argument for the supernatural basis of religion relies on this. I argued earlier that this is not necessarily true. The universe may have a finite past but it has existed for all time and there was therefore no prior time to the universe from which anything can supply it. The energy simply exists, it didn't pop into existence, it just exists.

It only requires that energy exists for all of time, which is the model I am using. You are still stuck in a false dichotomy, you have been stuck in it since you joined this forum. This is a third option. Why did God, in your model?

The Cosmological Argument goes back at least to Aristotle's First Cause or Prime Mover.

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William Lane Craig gives this argument in the following general form:

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Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The Universe began to exist.
Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

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Craig explains by nature of the event (the Universe coming into existence) attributes unique to (the concept of) God must also be attributed to the cause of this event including, but not limited to: omnipotence, Creator, being eternal and absolute self-sufficiency. Since, these attributes are unique to God anything with these attributes must be God. Something does have these attributes: the cause; hence, the cause is God, the cause exists; hence, God exists.

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From Wiki. This is more or less the argument that ICANT is using.

I am neither ICANT, Aristotle nor William Lane Craig.I was saying that they used or are using the cosmological argument to argue in favour of the existence of God and that therefore the cosmological argument should be considered on topic for discussion, though progress is not expected.The model of the universe I am arguing with ICANT is a godless universe which does not have a cause. You should employ the principle of charity more regularly and you might avoid making mistakes of this degree in the future.

I have an alternative wording that may or may not help. The model I am describing Spacetime is synonymous with existence.Speculating about things that are outside of existence is literally speculating on the non-existent.Existence didn't come from some place or time. You can't talk of some place of infinite energy or power outside of existence that must be in order to create existence. It by definition does not exist. In this philosophical model, based on general relativity cosmology. Existence has a finite past. Existence has never not existed. The energy exists. It has a finite history. Energy exists throughout space and time in varying concentrations.The statement 'the universe did not exist' makes as much sense as 'existence did not exist'. Such a state has never existed, nor could it - by definition.The same shields and foils you use can be deployed against your own model showing that the 'supernatural' hypothesis has no merits above the 'natural' one.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

No I don't, I had literally just said the opposite. Please make the effort to sincerely understand me. The universe didn't come from some place or time. It's existence itself. You are asking about something outside of existence. As I said: Speculating about things that are outside of existence is literally speculating on the non-existent. As you stated: "Either there is existence or there is non existence as there is no in between."So the place outside of existence which you speculate must exist to contain infinite energy?Doesn't exist in this model. By definition. This is technically correct, but not in the case where we are discussing a philosophical model in which Existence and The Universe are synonymous. You know, like when I said "The model I am describing Spacetime is synonymous with existence." No it doesn't. Einstein died before completing his registration at EvC. You are stuck with dealing with my model and your model. Your model can only lead to the conclusion that the supernatural exists by process of elimination. My model has not yet been eliminated, so you cannot reach the supernatural conclusion yet. Yes you do. In your model God is infinite and created the universe. That thing you pasted just after saying this, that includes 'Now whatever caused the universe to have a beginning to exist from an absence of anything would be a supernatural power'- That's your model. It has a finite past. That's all I care about for this thread. It does not require a 'beginning to exist'. It simply requires an earliest point in time. I said it before that the phrase 'beginning to exist' is frought with ambiguity and implications that are causing you some big hiccups.It didn't begin to exist. It exists. It has existed for all time. Time has a finite past. At the 'first point in time' it existed just as much as now. It was no more 'beginning to exist' than we are right now. Of course in my model, you are now speculating on the non-existent as 'outside of existence' is non-existent. (And remember, 'outside the universe' is 'outside of existence').The other problem you run into, that I mentioned earlier - is even if you reject the Universe=existence model, this still doesn't get you to the Supernatural. It just gets you to the superuniversal. Whether or not the superuniversal is supernatural is a completely different, and I'm going to say more difficult, argument. But simply speculating that the superuniversal exists does not advance your argument.There are lots of superuniversal natural models out there too. I kind of like the model which is infinite in space and time and the universe simply is noise. Increasing entropy in both directions of time, and one of the possible consequences of trying to increase entropy is to create pocket universes such as our own within the superuniversal realm. No supernatural, no direction, no intelligence required. Although it is speculative, it is mathematically consistent with what we know at the moment, which is more than can be said for infinitely powerful infinitely old beings that become ICANT's best friend. Start taking me seriously, and we can avoid you repeating yourself and us going in circles.This is all kinds of wrong, but let me tell you that time is part of the universe. If the universe exists, time exists. My model does not postulate{Some period of time passes} -> {The universe begins to exist} -> {Time and space begin to exist}Rather it is simply
{Space and time exist}This would be like speculating that I had a swimming pool in my back garden before it had a length (presumably I was stuck doing widths ) , that I started drinking my beer before it had any volume....The universe exists, time exists. They have some properties that apes find odd to the point of being difficult or impossible to understand, depending on species and individual.If you would prefer we can move beyond the 'the universe must have come from somewhere' argument, and start discussing why the 'somewhere' must be supernatural. I just think this is a simpler argument to have and I'm not confident that if this argument has been so difficult to have, the other one will go smoother. In my experience, this part of the argument is exactly the same as that part ultimately - we've just abstracted it one level which fools us into thinking our speculations can go wild and we can befriend entities from other dimensions. We have to get through that confusing point and then we realize we're having the same argument as we were before decided to go the further step. IE - is a supernatural agent required to 'kick start' it or no? The answer is 'no'. This is not the same as saying a supernatural agent didn't kick start it, just that there doesn't seem to be an absolute need to have one in order for a universe to exist.