Uncreated Creator Argument

Demonstrate where it is flawed, I give you permission. 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 analyze the claim you have made above. For instance, for how long has the universe existed already? If you give me a number then it means that the universe had a point of conception because it has an age, something can only have an age if it had a birthday. Secondly if your answer is it must have always existed, then you are suggesting that the universe has eternally existed, and if something has eternally existed it is not subject to extinction or running down for the reason that it is eternal. You cannot escape the logic this argument is founded on sorry. You seem very confused here, I am wondering if you have a lucid and coherent point on this subject.[/qs]What the! For a second time. What is wrong with my reasoning here, history only exists because time exists; you and I are currently making history, your every last action is part history, and guess what without time none of the above would be happening. This words that I’m typing onto the screen are being formed in time, without time this would be impossible. If they are not applied then they are not taking place, and if they are not taking place they aren’t functioning. By not functioning I’m not saying that the laws have broken down, I simply mean that they have been paused. Let us suppose that shortly after chucking a chair at someone who has offended time stops, will that chair pause in midway or complete its course. The answer is a simple no; the chair will pause in midair because for a change in position to occur time is essential. You are basically guessing what will happen. In any case as I have mentioned the physical laws do not have to apply to God and his surrounding, he made the laws surely he wasn’t stuck in just one position before he made them. Plus according to what the bible says God is spirit and heaven is a spiritual location, therefore you cannot make the above assertions as you do not know on what laws the spirit realm operates, for example it has been said that angels travel at the speed of thought, I don’t know if this is true, but if it is true it illustrates that the spirit world operates differently, also spirit beings can travel through obstructions like walls and the like as was demonstrated by Jesus shortly after his resurrection. From this too examples it would be clear to anyone that the laws that govern us are not the same laws that govern the spirit realm. Look at that you’re getting too personal, calm down man, this isn’t the Jerry Springer Show; here we do things in a civilized manner so latch onto your decorum. Wow some people are just not built for debates they turn onto the debater when debater disagrees with them. Huh! This guy has really convinced himself that he is a guest on the Springer Show, have a look at all those insults gushing forth from his mouth. I think you need to undergo a physics module, or if you already have then you need to revisit your class notes.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

It is exactly this reason that I get the heebie jeebies around religious people. Not relying on evidence means that those people are profoundly unpredictable; there is no good reason for a significant portion of their behaviors. This usually manifests in relatively tame ways, such as altering their dietary habits or social behaviors, but one day they could be told by God to go on a murder spree. Sure, this doesn’t happen much. It is just a little disturbing to have it in the back of my mind the possibility that on certain topics the person I am dealing with will suddenly behave completely nutters, and *they don’t see a problem with it!* And that is disturbing, that you would consider your unfounded beliefs as equally probable as empirically founded beliefs. This is essentially saying that you do not differentiate between your fantasy world and the real world. Such an attitude can cause real trouble; would you push someone out into the road under the belief that God would save them? Of course not, you would argue, my religion does not say that is a good idea any more than common courtesy. Well what about praying for someone to get better rather than getting them medical attention that goes against your religious beliefs? Pig organs, stem cells, etc?If religion was a purely private practice then there would be no justification for people to criticize you for your choices. After all, it would be none of their business. On the other hand when religion extends beyond the purely personal and starts affecting others it becomes an issue. My personal unstated social contract prohibits treating imagination as reality, both for myself and others. Doesn’t yours?

Again, this does not logically follow. If you state that something has an end you have established that it has an end. That is all. If you state that something has no beginning then you have established that it has no beginning. THAT IS ALL. Surely this isn’t too much for your intellect to grasp?Imagine that your god today makes a golden ball, about the size of a baseball. He stated that as a symbol of his love, the ball would endure forever and never be destroyed. Can you conceive of that? By your deeply flawed logic earlier, because the ball had a beginning you for some reason would assume that the ball would also need to have an end even though God said it wouldn’t. You see, they are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, and one can be true without the other. I don’t care if your brain has to work overtime to think properly, and I don’t care if you strain something striving for rational thought, it is something you should shoot for. It is a subtle difference that I didn’t expect you to be able to fathom. My example was gravity; while gravity is very obvious when it affects the movement of objects, it also has fundamental effects on the surrounding space. The very fabric of space-time is bent by gravity, and that does not cease to be when time is frozen.To put it very clearly, we can conceptually pick any snapshot of time and consider it as a unique period of frozen time. Since we can pick *any* period of time and do this then every moment in time as we experience it follows the same rules. If we stated that things like gravity stopped working during periods of frozen time then we would be suggesting that there is no time when gravity works, which is clearly ridiculous. Instead we mean that we cannot observe the normal effects of such properties and forces because the time frame does not allow effects to take place. What did we say about special pleading? Besides, you talked yourself into a corner later on in the post where you ruled out a plethora of gods; after all, a god does not have to make sense right? I am actually being more polite than you are; after all it was you who suggested that your inability to understand something made it impossible. I simply stated that your handicap is not handicapping the entire universe, which I suppose could be interpreted as a compliment. I backed up my assertion, and you will notice that I am not trying to use it to disprove any of your ideas without evidence. If you claim to think in ways that are not sane then you should not be surprised if people point such things out. I don’t think this is an accepted method of logical debate. Are you trying to attack my points through ridicule? That tactic is a well-documented fallacy. You will have to provide an argument that contains substance. This method is not acceptable, as you don’t even identify what parts you do not agree with.

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.

Or something with a begining but no end. But it dosen't matter. An eternal God is the only thing that really makes sense. He can't kinda-be-eternal. Everything with an end has a begining, and vice-versa.

Does it? Is this the same eternal God that is overly concerned about the male foreskin?Cheers,
--Caldron68

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. 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.

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. Edited by deadendhero, : No reason given.

Not everything that has an end has a beginning. This ray:<----------------------------*has no beginning, but it has an end (assuming that time moves from left to right).Your assertion that "an eternal God is the only thing that really makes sense" is pretty flimsy. By whose standard of "sense?" Why does an eternal god have more validity than a finite god? Why does any god have more validity than no god at all? Why do you believe that "making sense" to a human being has anything to do with reality?Further, how does causality apply outside of the Universe? Time is an aspect of the Universe, just as North and East are aspects of a globe. Causality requires a "before," an earlier point in time for the cause to occupy so that the effect can follow. How does this apply when no "before" exists? It's like asking what's farther North than the North Pole - the question is self-contradictory. How then can something "cause" that which itself encompasses causality?What reason do you have to assume that the Universe has a cause?What allows you to assert that everything has a cause, yet simultaneously assert that "God" has no cause? If "God" can be an exception to causality, why then cannot the Universe? If you have no objective reason, then are you not engaged in special pleading? If not, why not?

Hi, Deadendhero. Longevity is inherently open-ended: many people die before their time.You are assuming that a phenomenon that can prolong itself infinitely is immune to external sources of interruption.So, in order for your argument to hold, you have to qualify an eternal, all-powerful God. But, this only shows that it isn't God's eternality that prevents Him from dying, but His all-power.Edited by Bluejay, : emfassis

---

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

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?

On what basis do you conclude this? If you are going to insist on viewing this in terms of the first uncaused cause does it not make more sense to conclude that the one thing that you know exists (i.e. the universe) is in fact the first uncaused?Rather than going back that extra step to include something that we don't even know exists?

Hi, Rahvin.I've heard these same arguments several times before, but, like everything else that deals with cosmology, I can't understand it. Let me play a bit of devil's advocate to see if you can help me iron out my cognitive dissonance. That's the question that bugs the hell out of me.The principle of causality seems to defy its own rules.If the principle was brought into existence, doesn't this mean that the principle "predates" itself?Or, if it always existed, wouldn't this mean that its own existence is a violation of itself?Can a principle of nature violate its own rules?Are there possible explanations other than, "it was brought into being" and "it has always existed"?

---

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. Well, I don't know if it's a particularly logical conclusion, but it does seem counter-intuitive (to say the least) that a universe built on the principle of causality is not subject to causality itself.

---

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Counter-intuitive certainly.But is not the idea of quantum fluctuations, which I suppose is the closest directly evdenced analogous event, also equally counter intuitive?Is intuitiveness a reasonable standard by which to judge such things? I would suggest that this standard, such as it is, has been found wanting too many times to command any real validity at all.......Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.