Summations Only

Designtheorist,A while ago, in Message 139, you said:

quote:

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... Because the cause of the big bang had to exist prior to the creation of spacetime, therefore the cause is not physical/material. Physical/material things must be located in spacetime. Since the cause existed before time, the cause must be timeless. Therefore, the cause of the big bang is both immaterial and timeless.

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Given those constraints, can you conceive of anything immaterial and timeless which could effect the big bang and not be a being?

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It must be a being because otherwise is inconceivable.

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Unless, of course, you can conceive of an immaterial timeless cause which is sufficient to generate the big bang and physical universe as amazing as ours. If you can, I would love to hear your description of it.

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Looking back on that, and also remembering earlier posts, I think your argument can be summarized as follows (leaving aside the details for a moment):You begin (more or less) with al-Ghazali's - actually Aristotle's - syllogism "what begins to exist (et cetera)", thereby establishing the universe must have a cause. Next you reason that this cause must be immaterial and timeless. Finally, you conclude that this immaterial and timeless cause must be a conscious, godlike being.Although I think that (1) it remains to be established whether the premises of the syllogism are true, and (2) you use tenuous logic in the next step, to do with time and existence, the thing that bemuses me most is the last step. Well, not the conclusion itself actually, which is to be expected, but rather the fact that this step is devoid of logic, tenuous or otherwise. In view of the rest of your posts, this is at least uncharacteristic.If you cannot flesh out that last step considerably, then I'm afraid your reasoning amounts to little more than an argument from incredulity. Could you humour me?

Designtheorist,Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, it does not answer my question. What I want to know is how you get from an immaterial and timeless cause of the Big Bang to that cause having to be a being. You do not touch upon it at all.I'll quote you again from Message 139: Can I conceive of anything immaterial and timeless which could effect the Big Bang and not be a being? Well, to begin with, I cannot even conceive of something immaterial and timeless causing the Big Bang, period. Let alone that this cause could not be anything other than a 'being'.The way I see it, you start out posing something inconceivable and then compound the matter by adding an extra quality, of 'beingness' no less, thereby making it even more inconceivable. Had it been my flight of fancy, I would have bailed out at the first level of inconceivability.However, please do not let this prevent you from trying to flesh out the argument on this point. I appreciate your attempts at thoroughness, but you have still to answer my question properly.

I'll keep this short, because others have already said most of what can be said about this thread. I think Designtheorist's story rests for the most part on an argument from incredulity. Another fallacy we've seen is the argument from authority. We are no closer to understanding what, if anything, caused the Big Bang. But I think we were not expecting that anyway.