There are two assertions in what youve stated there, and youve run them together as if they are somehow synonymous. They are not. It may indeed be the case that the world began to exist, but it certainly isnt a demonstrable truth that anything that begins to exist must have an external cause. In the material world there are no instances of anything beginning to exist, but only changes in form, i.e. ex-materia. So the inference is misleading and unfounded.
That is why I said "universe", I purposely said all SPACE, TIME, ENERGY, AND MATTER (STEM) just in case you were going to go that route. Apparently, it was a wasted effort.
Second, on the standard big bang model, STEM is exactly what began to exist, so it would be nonsensical to talk about "changes in material form" if there was a point at which no materia exists, which is what the model predicts.
Third, you have an infinity problem, and no cosmological model can help you solve this problem, because a universe that is changing in form has to exist in time, and time cannot be logically extended into past eternity.
Well I think it is less controversial to speak of the world existing indefinitely, which in fact is to make no claim at all, than it is to assert that world will come cease to be at some unknown and unknowable point in time.
Huh?
But do natural laws have law givers? I think youve come to the question by beginning with the answer a circular assumption in other words.
So what gave nature law its standards..I mean, that is what law is, right? A governing standard...so what gave natural law its standard? Especially coming from a chaotic, unintelligible big bang?
No! An external cause is not absolutely necessary.
Pay attention, cot. I said
"IF THE UNIVERSE (STEM), BEGAN TO EXIST, THEN AN EXTERNAL CAUSE IS NECESSARY".
Now you can argue whether or not the universe began to exist all you like, but what you can't deny is the fact that if all natural reality began to exist, then it follows intuitively that there must have been an external cause. Otherwise, you are saying that the universe popped in to being uncaused out of nothing...and if that is the price of unbelief, then by all means, have at it.
Naturalism describes a process and is not an explanation of how the world began.
Well, if the "world" began from a point of non-existence, then that cries for an explanation.
The argument Ive given you for a self-existent (i.e. uncaused) world isnt dependent upon science or naturalism but shares exactly the same metaphysical significance as the god hypothesis but with the clear advantage of not being constrained by the notion of a self-contradictory personal being, a point Ill be expanding on in my reply to your response.
I will wait.
I made it very clear Im not stating absurdly that something can come from nothing or that a thing can create itself. And no, something did not always had to be there; that is simply an ingrained notion, a belief, not a necessary truth.
Then pick a position and stick with it, because as far as im concerned you are clearly double-talking. If the universe did not come from nothing nor did it create itself, then it always had to be here. Point blank, period. If you exclude the other, the other one wins by default (law of excluded middle).
What Im saying is that causality is a worldly phenomenon that has no logical necessity, and therefore the concept of an uncaused world can never imply a contradiction. And if the world is uncaused and exists now where nothing at all existed previously, not even a vacuum, then no argument from contingency can be made to any necessary cause of the world, for contingency and necessity would have no meaning outside the world.
I still dont get it, not that it negates the problem of infinity anyway.
Hence arguments that the world must have an external cause or that something can or cannot come from nothing, or can or cannot be the cause of its own existence, are completely irrelevant since causality exists only within the world, and from which it follows that whatever is may not be to quote David Hume. This self-evidently makes God, the Necessary Being, an impossible concept.
Still don't ge it.
Not as an identifiable essential self.
So if your self is not identifiable, then who are you? If you even begin to answer that question, you are setting up a defeater for your own point.
Undeniably it is bodies and their actions that account for the us. And if brains are part of the body, which they are, then it is body, the collective noun us, that is in control.
But what determines the actual choice...you, or the neurons in your brain?
Of course Im not able to give a blow-by-blow account of the process that began once the world came into existence any more than you can ever explain how an immaterial thing (God) could produce form and matter.
Its not the same...as I told others, I expect scientific claims to have scientific explanations.
But I think came to life is a rather too simplistic an explanation. A single self-replicating molecule would barely deserve the term life, but the incredibly long and developing process would follow from that inception after millions of years to see the beginning of life as we might understand it now with creatures that developed reflexes and instincts, acting upon cause and effect, and it is plausible that humans as evolving higher order animals come to acknowledge and reflect on their own existence in the environment they inhabit; and that, I think, is not in any sense an unintelligible thesis.
That is basically the entire issue...the answer is "give it enough time, and it can happen". That isn't any more reasonable to my ears than me telling an unbeliever "give it enough time, and Jesus will return".
