If you believe in god, you have to believe in leprechauns.

I dispute assumption #3, as follows:The first cause argument. All events have a cause. If we trace all events back far enough we get to a First Cause, whom we assign the name of God.usual reply: there is no reason to suppose that the universe has not always existed.my response: Big Bang. The universe had a beginning.

The Big Bang has changed that thought process. The assumption was that the universe had always existed, so it would be reasonable to ask, who made God? And why God especially? Why not something else?But I am giving you a definition of God--the First Cause, whatever that might be. There was a first cause, according to Big Bang theory.Let us ask ourselves what existed before the Big Bang. The answer is Nothing. That is to say, nothing that we know about, because all we know about is matter/energy and space/time. There was none of that.And yet there was a cause for the Big Bang. Something made it happen.The first casue is God.

The Big Bang has changed that thought process. The assumption was that the universe had always existed, so it would be reasonable to ask, who made God? And why God especially? Why not something else?But I am giving you a definition of God--the First Cause, whatever that might be. There was a first cause, according to Big Bang theory.Let us ask ourselves what existed before the Big Bang. The answer is Nothing. That is to say, nothing that we know about, because all we know about is matter/energy and space/time. There was none of that.And yet there was a cause for the Big Bang. Something made it happen.The first cause is God.

Sorry for the repeat. I was correcting spelling.

No doubt, Sideline, it violated all sorts of rules and regulations, but it happened. We have adequate proof of that.Something made nothing into something.What caused that to happen?The First Cause.

Don't you understand that the Big Bang changes everything?In order to have a cause you have to have time for that cause to occur. There was no time before the Big Bang. There cannot be a cause for a cause before the Big Bang. If you want to call God something else, feel free. You can call the First Cause leprachaun if you want.No special pleading involved here.

Are you telling me that nothing caused the Big Bang?Does that seem reasonable to you?

If it "occurred" then something caused it to occur.That is the First Cause.Whatever that is, that is God--by traditional definition.It can't be something physical because there was no physicality.It can't be something that is in time, because there was no time.Sounds like a good definition of God to me.

"flat" and "sphere" are not necessary logically (they might be, but I don't know enough to say).I am talking about what is logically necessary.

Where's the bad logic?I'm just saying that the Big Bang had a cause.Is that illogical?

Your analogy does not apply. You are talking about something that is not logically necessary. It is not logically necessary that mammals do not lay eggs.To show you how strict logic is, I can tell you that it is not logically necessary that I have a body. It may be an illusion.But it is logically necessary that 2 + 2 make 4. And that every effect have a cause.

Quantam mechanics proves no such thing.You are confusing expected data with logic.

My ideas are as follows:1. The Big Bang was the first event in space and time.2. Something triggered it.3. That which triggered it is not in space and time.4. Saying that an event might not have a cause is like saying that 2+2 might not make 4, or that a statement that contradicts itself might be true.5. As regards formalism versus common sense: It is true that common sensical notions about the world sometimes turn out to be false (quantum physics, for example), but that does not mean that quantum physics violates some basic logical principle. It's perfectly logical, or it wouldn't be true (this is "formalism," which I accept). It's just that we can't visualize the situation in the quantum world. It's our imaginative sense-functions that are limited here, not our logical abilities.6. Therefore, the provability of whether or not there is a God and the provability of whether or not there are leprechauns are not on the same level. There might be leprechauns but there is no reason to suppose there are any, not a shred of evidence. The First Cause, however, assuming the validity of the Big Bang theory, is another matter entirely. The Red Shift, the background radiation, and all the rest of this theory point to the conclusion that there is or was a First Cause--i.e., that the universe came into being.7. One does not have to call the First Cause "God," of course, but it fits the definition--something outside space and time that causes the universe to come into being. Many religious philosophers from many different religions have said for thousands of years that God is in a sense "nothing" and in a sense does not "exist." What they mean is not that there is no God, but that God does not exist in space and time, and our imaginations cannot visualize anything else.

That which is the First Cause would have to be something that has always existed. The universe has not always existed.

We are dealing with 2 phenomena: that which comes into being and that which has always existed. That which comes into being had something outside of it which triggered it into being. It could not trigger itself because it didn't exist before it came into being.
This is my explanation of why everything that has not always existed has a cause.The universe is a phenomenom that came into being, assuming the validity of the Big Bang theory.That which has always existed needs no cause because it never came into being.As far as calling the First Cause a leprechaun or whatever--you can call it what you like. But that is meaningless. We were under the assumption that the concept of "deity" is not the same concept as the concept of "leprechaun." Your point is that you might as well believe in one as the other. My point is that the definition of "deity" includes the idea of being a First Cause. This is not the case with leprechauns. This is why your comparison does not hold.