Subject:
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Re: Holy crap! Four out of five scientists claim....
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 16 Oct 2003 18:14:15 GMT
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Viewed:
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902 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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After all, the universe is not a thing--it is the set of all
things (just the set of all numbers is not itself a number). To this end,
the positing of God creates an extraneous step (and a big one); if the
universe can in some way have created itself or could always have existed,
then no God is needed.
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My point is that if you hold that the universe always existed, that is a
faith statement as much as any about God having always existed.
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But the key difference is that I am saying “I accept that the universe may
always have existed,” rather than “I believe that God has always existed.” I
offer and accept the universe’s existence as a possibility, but I don’t put
faith in that assertion the way theists put faith in God’s existence.
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Also, if God is the only thing that didn’t “begin to exist,” then to say
that “all things that began to exist had a cause” is circular (and also
special pleading (a double standard)), since it says “all things except God
had a cause.” On the other hand, if there’s something else that didn’t
“begin to exist,” then that thing was by definition not created by God and
is thus not beholden to God; therefore, God would not be infinite or
omnipotent.
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I think that the entity of God by definition would qualify as relevently
different from the universe as an entity, and therefore not special pleading.
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But that’s just the ontological argument for God, and it’s a fallacy. And it’s
special pleading because you’re saying that we’re not allowed to engage your
cosmogonical theory on the same terms as any other theory. Simply declaring
outright that something is unique is the same as assuming that something is
unique, and, since that’s the essence of the argument, your argument is
circular.
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So, either:
A) God is the only thing that didn’t have a cause (using the Principle of
Relevant Difference) and He created the universe, or
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Again, this point must be rejected as I describe above. Further, even if God
always existed, there’s no reason to think that He created the universe. He may
have found it, for example, or he may have created a freewilled entity who in
turn created the universe. Your origin model requires many more leaps of faith
(and gigantic leaps, at that) than the more parsimonious scientific model.
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B) The universe didn’t have a cause, it always existed.
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Or C) The universe had a cause unknowable to us. This is not a statement of
faith, since it is not a statement of faith to identify the limits of knowledge.
It would be faith if I said “we can never, in principle, know the cause of the
universe, so I therefore believe that it was caused by (insert cause here).”
Or D) The universe caused itself through processes unknowable to us. This is
also not a statement of faith.
Or E) The universe was caused by something currently unknown to us but which we
may eventually know, even if that cause is the universe itself. This is
likewise not a statement of faith.
And there are many, many other options.
Dave!
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