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Author Topic:   Uncreated Creator Argument
Perdition
Member (Idle past 3237 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 34 of 80 (506186)
04-23-2009 5:08 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by Cedre
04-23-2009 11:22 AM


Re: something has to be the uncaused cause.
What the! Were you excited when you made this statement? How can something that has always existed have an end, something that has an end must have a beginning because the second you claim that it has always existed your ascribing it the property of being eternal. According to what you are saying something could eternally exist and at the same time not be eternal. When something has always existed it has existed eternally. Sir/Miss your kind of reasoning will only end in a huge throbbing headache.
Let's see if you understand 6th grade mathematics. If not, then I can see why you have so much trouble understanding the points we bring up.
Do you know what a mathematical line is? It is a one dimensional object that extends in two directions for ever. That is what you understand as eternal, it never stops.
Do you know what a mathematical ray is? It is an object that continues forever in one direction, but has an end in the other.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by deadendhero, posted 04-23-2009 8:25 PM Perdition has replied

  
Perdition
Member (Idle past 3237 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 37 of 80 (506247)
04-24-2009 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by deadendhero
04-23-2009 8:25 PM


Re: something has to be the uncaused cause.
Everything with an end has a begining, and vice-versa.
That's what my ray example was supposed to show you was incorrect. I don't understand why it's so hard for some to understand that something can be unending in one direction, but terminate in the other.
An eternal God is the only thing that really makes sense.
This actually makes very little sense, to me at least, because it carries with it a whole lot of extra baggage that must be dealt with. Parsimony would tend to rule out an eternal God.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by deadendhero, posted 04-30-2009 1:46 PM Perdition has replied

  
Perdition
Member (Idle past 3237 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 41 of 80 (506962)
04-30-2009 2:14 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by deadendhero
04-30-2009 1:46 PM


Re: something has to be the uncaused cause.
How does a God that always was, just die at a certain point, or a God that has a begining but always was, make sense. Aren't they botha little contradictory? I may be overcomplicating the problem, but that is how I see it.
For one thing, I never mentioned a god, I was merely responding to the claim that something that has always existed must always continue to exist.
To your points, though, why couldn't a God have a lifetime of 15 billion years? Since the Universe is just under 14 billion years old, that god would have existed forever, as far as this Universe is concerned, and could die at any time in the next billion years.
Similarly, the half-life of a proton is expected to be longer than the Universe has currently been in existence, but that doesn't mean a proton won't ever "die."
As for your second point, either you misread what I said, or misstated what you mean. A god that has a beginning, but always was, makes no sense. A god that never dies, but begins at some point in time, does...sort of. Let's go with the new big movie coming out, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Let's say we come up with a syrum, or we develop a mutation, that grants immortality, much like Wolverine has. Theoretically, Wolverine will never die, but that doesn't mean he has always existed, does it?

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3237 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 46 of 80 (506974)
04-30-2009 3:40 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by Blue Jay
04-30-2009 2:33 PM


Re: The cause of causality
If the principle was brought into existence, doesn't this mean that the principle "predates" itself?
It's also possible that causality is a property of our universe, a side effect of time if you will, not just a principle. So there was no causality "before" the universe, but as soon as the universe began to expand, time and causality, hand in hand, came in to play.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3237 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 49 of 80 (506981)
04-30-2009 4:49 PM
Reply to: Message 48 by Blue Jay
04-30-2009 4:39 PM


Re: something has to be the uncaused cause.
Surely parsimony is irrelevant to things that have no cause.
Why? Whether it has a cause or not, choosing the agent that requires more assumptions than one that doesn't still doesn't make sense.
Edited by Perdition, : Close the quote box...

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3237 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 77 of 80 (507691)
05-07-2009 12:28 PM
Reply to: Message 73 by Blue Jay
05-06-2009 8:54 PM


Re: The cause of causality
In a Universe where logic appears to be a way to discern things, at least at the macro level, things that are logically inconsistent or impossible don't "not exist", it's just complete nonsense to even speak of them. It's one of the side effects of language, we can make sentences that follow all grammatical rules but still result in nonsense.
It's like asking how long the 5th leg of a four-legged animal is. A four-legged animal's fifth leg doesn't just "not exist" it makes no sense to speak of it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 73 by Blue Jay, posted 05-06-2009 8:54 PM Blue Jay has replied

Replies to this message:
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