Why do you believe what you believe?

'No reason why "god," whatever that is, should "interact."'There is a whole lot of wasted time in intercessary prayer then, isn't there? Wait - UNLESS we have created God in OUR image - then prayer probably makes sense - just another way of knowing ourselves, isn't it?

Robin, your confusion about logical fallacies not withstanding, Chiroptera is not "coming up with all these labels"(re: logical fallacies) There are some standard rules of logic for use in argument and a "logical fallacy" is a statement which breaks the rules. There are many of these that have been defined - actually there are only a handful of basic types and the rest are variations on a theme, if you will. Here is one rather comprehensive website on the topic if you are interested.http://www.fallacyfiles.org/

I know what a logical fallacy is; I was denying I was committing any.

Everything? How can that be? Everything includes "god", so if "god" is the cause of everything, then "god" must have caused himself. You deny this possibility for the universe. Why then allow it for "god"?

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Chiroptera was quite specific in what logical fallacy he thought you were committing - if you disagreed you should have defended your logic in a reasonable fashion, not with a hand wave of "all these labels you come up with...." It is not too much to ask on a debate forum.

Nor was I accusing Robin of committing any fallacies himself. I was merely giving a brief summary of an old argument that seemed somewhat similar to Robin's post.

The purported God did not cause himself. That's impossible. He just always existed.I also said that one could claim that the universe always existed as an alternative.What I am denying is that something can cause itself to come into existence from non-existence.

Might be. I don't know. The more attributes you ascribe to God, the less reasonable the idea becomes. If you just stick to Creator, it's not unreasonable.

"The more attributes you ascribe to God, the less reasonable the idea becomes. If you just stick to Creator, it's not unreasonable."Hold on there. Aren't you arguing on another thread that morality derives from God? If God is "just the Creator", then there is revelation only through the creation, correct? Man, being part of the creation, can therefore be a source of morality, is that not also correct?

Not that I recall. I was arguing that human morality has no ground, if that's what you're referring to.

How about the universe coming into existence ex-nihilo, without a cause? It doesn't cause itself, nothing causes it. But it has a beginning, at least when viewed from the inside. Incidentally, inside is the only side available, when the universe is concerned.P.S. I hope you don't feel you are being given the rough treatment. If so, please know that it's not meant that way, at least not from me.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

What I am saying is that this idea makes no sense to me whatsoever. If you can explain how something can not exist and then start to exist with no outside help, then do so. NOt at all. I like it.

I can't explain it. But neither can I get my head around something (God, the universe) existing eternally. Both options are equally baffling, I suppose. Good.Got to go now, it's late here.
See you.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

The problem is that you are assuming there was a "before" to the universe. It's not that it didn't exist, and then it existed. Time began with the rest of the universe. There was no "before." Everything that exists has always existed.This may be a poor analogy, but I'll give it a try. Imagine space-time to be a 3-dimentional cone. As you move further down the cone's axis (representing time), the height and width (symbolizing the 3 spacial dimentions) expand. We exist at a specific moment along the axis, and can only move in one direction. Seeing that the spatial dimentions grow as time moves on, we extrapolate backwards and realize that, at the moment time began, the spacial dimentions were all crammed into a single point. The initial moments are called the "Big Bang," becuase the expansion is remeniscient of (though not truly like) an explosion. There is, however, no "before." The axis representing time ends at the singularity point. How could anything "Create" it if there was no "before?"

I guess maybe I've been thinking about these things for a long time, but I have no trouble imagining something beginning without a cause (in fact, don't very young children have to be taught that nothing happens without a cause?), nor do I have much trouble with the concept of something, like the universe, having existed for an infinite amount of time.What I do have a lot of trouble with is the concept of something existing "before" time began, or the concept of something existing without time or space.