Shoe is on the other foot: Prove there is not God.

[McBell]

Actually I havent got an ego

You go right on telling yourself whatever it takes to keep your warm fuzzies.

 

[Humanistheart]

Actually I havent got an ego

Everyone has an ego.

 

[David69]

Everyone has an ego.

yeah but not the kind him up there is implying

 

[challupa]

You go right on telling yourself whatever it takes to keep your warm fuzzies.

We sure are having a lot of full moons this month!

 

[UnTheist]

Well prove it.

i guarantee this has been stated at least 10 times in this thread but: stupid way to start an argument/can't prove a negative/prove unicorns don't exist/the onus is not on the non-believer, etc.

 

[McBell]

We sure are having a lot of full moons this month!

seems that way.:yes:

 

[challupa]

seems that way.:yes:

Maybe it's a sign of the second coming or something. Our ordered earth that usually only gives us one full moon a month, 2 at the very most is steering off path! It's got to mean something!!:sarcastic

 

[AK4]

I am not playing your move the goal posts game.
You claimed that everything has a starting point.
Then you claim that God does not.

To support your God does not claim, you come up with some "ultimate starting point" line and have heavily implied that if one cannot prove the falseness of this "ultimate starting point" claim that your argument is sound.

Now because no one is playing your game, you seem to think you have gained some sort of upper hand.

Did I move the goal posts? What the OP say? For you guys to prove He doesn’t exist. The proof that there must be an ultimate starting point is proof of a God. Since you guys cant unprove an ultimate starting point [aka a God] you once again try to revert back to tactics such as what you have stated above “im not going to play that game”. Heres is what you are really saying “since I cannot disprove an ultimate starting point, I will try divert attention elsewhere” etc etc etc

If you were to present something from a source that has some authority outside your choir, perhaps.
But the Bible has no authority outside the religious choir.

Wow so a book about a God has no authority in a debate about a God? Wow unbelievable. Can anyone else see these guys tricks?

If all you got is the Bible, then you have nothing but circular reasoning.
Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy and not accepted by those who do not accept said circular reasoning.

Have I only been using the bible? Am I not addressing at least three different areas, science, philosophy, religion? Throw in mathematics, physics also. So where is the circular reasoning?

The Bible is not proof of god.

The bible is one proof. Science another. Philosophy, logical thinking another. Math another. And on and on.

That is correct.
Because there is nothing outside your beliefs that god exists to support that god exists.

The proof is in the pudding. If you have an ultimate starting. You therefore have a supreme something. You guys just refuse to admit the obvious because of yall pride.

Why?
Because you cannot prove your belief in god without resorting solely to your belief in god to prove that god exists?

My proof is an ultimate starting point. Now unless you can prove something created can be eternal, then you and your likeminded friends have no leg to stand on. Now, you guys have absolutely NO PROOF of ANYTHING eternal. You guys lose so just admit it.

You have done no such thing.

Oh really? Hmmm so saying prove something is eternal in science or in a philosophical way is not going to yall playing field? Have I in this thread said “since the bible says so, it must be true and there is no need for any other proofs”? No not once, I always said that they all must mesh together.

This is nothing more than you using the Bible to ratify your already preconceived belief that God exists.

Yet another proof you guys wanna throw out.

 

[AK4]

Prove what exactly?

That you are doing nothing more than trying to hide all your logical fallacies with smoke and mirrors?

Been there, done that.

So my "prove something is eternal" is a logical fallacy? Crazy. I believe they call what you are doing "ducking and dodging"

 

[tumbleweed41]

Did I move the goal posts? What the OP say? For you guys to prove He doesn’t exist. The proof that there must be an ultimate starting point is proof of a God. Since you guys cant unprove an ultimate starting point [aka a God] you once again try to revert back to tactics such as what you have stated above “im not going to play that game”. Heres is what you are really saying “since I cannot disprove an ultimate starting point, I will try divert attention elsewhere” etc etc etc

There is sufficient evidence at present to justify the theory that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so. This evidence includes the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems that are based on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and the recently introduced Quantum Cosmological Models of the early universe. The singularity theorems lead to an explication of the beginning of the universe that involves the notion of a Big Bang singularity, and the Quantum Cosmological Models represent the beginning largely in terms of the notion of a vacuum fluctuation.


Theories that represent the universe as infinitely old or as caused to begin are shown to be at odds with or at least unsupported by these and other current cosmological notions.

 

[cottage]

Did I move the goal posts? What the OP say? For you guys to prove He doesn’t exist. The proof that there must be an ultimate starting point is proof of a God. Since you guys cant unprove an ultimate starting point [aka a God] you once again try to revert back to tactics such as what you have stated above “im not going to play that game”. Heres is what you are really saying “since I cannot disprove an ultimate starting point, I will try divert attention elsewhere” etc etc etc.

There is no proof ‘that there must be an ultimate starting point’.
We can conceive of an ‘ultimate starting point’ answering to something further in order for it to be the ultimate starting point. Whatever we can conceive we can always imagine more: we can conceive of infinity without contradiction. And a first cause (or ‘ultimate starting point’, in your terms) must logically answer to a necessary existence, which doesn’t by any means imply a deity.

[ My proof is an ultimate starting point. Now unless you can prove something created can be eternal, then you and your likeminded friends have no leg to stand on. Now, you guys have absolutely NO PROOF of ANYTHING eternal. You guys lose so just admit it.

Of course there is no proof that the material world is self-existent. It is a metaphysical hypothesis, and no different to speculating that there is a first cause.
But you have to defend your argument, which is to prove that there is an ultimate starting point.

 

[AK4]

It doesn't fit. Not into this argument, anyhow.

How not?

I'm not making the claim, I'm pointing out that you haven't excluded this possibility. Until you do, your argument doesn't work.

Yeah I have. Almost all science agrees that there has to be a beginning so that in itself kills the possibility that anything in our physical universal is eternal

Let nobody say you're uncreative in your use of logical fallacies.

Its funny you guys keep changing the words as if you not all saying the same thing. Special pleading, logical fallacies….i cant even remember then all now.

Right - until you demonstrate to me that the Bible is an authority, the fact that some passage comes from the Bible doesn't add any extra weight or credibility to it. The mere fact that you believe the Bible to be authoritative doesn't mean that you've demonstrated this in your argument.

How can a book about a god, rather the bible or whatever not have any authority in a debate about a god? Its equivalent to saying a book about the holocaust cant be used to prove that it happened. That’s funny

If you think that's what I'm doing, then you've misunderstood what I've written.

I'm not saying that your religion is false; I'm saying that you haven't demonstrated to us that the tenets of your religion are correct. Until you do this, any statements you give that are only based on your religion are just unsupported opinions; they might be true or they might be false, but we've been given no reason to assume one way or the other.

I have. The major tenet of my religion is that there has to be a ultimate starting point. My religion calls it God the Father. Science says there has to be an ultimate starting point to something created. My religion calls it God, others call it whatever they want, atheists and the like just refuse to believe there is an ultimate starting point when there is no evidence that anything is eternal.

- everything needs a cause.
- God doesn't need a cause.

These two statements can't be true at the same time unless God is not part of "everything"... i.e. unless God is nothing. And a thing that is nothing does not exist.
Youre looking at it wrong. I do see how the way you are looking at it would be a valid argument, but that’s not what “my religion” teaches. This is how those two don’t contradict

-everything is in God
-So that answers “everything needs a cause” because God would be the cause of it all
-Since God is the cause of it all and everything is in Him, that answers why God doesn’t need a cause.

Tell you what: I'll respond to this as soon as you demonstrate that an "ultimate starting point" must exist and that this "ultimate starting point" cannot be the universe itself.

Answer this, Can an expanding universe be an THE ultimate starting point? If something is expanding, that in itself says there must have been a beginning. If there is a beginning, that means at one point there couldn’t have been a universe at all. To say that a “cosmic egg” had always existed in a state that it couldn’t have stayed in is ludicrous. How could it be always in a state that it cant contain? Theres your proof right there that it cant be the universe and that something else must exist before the universe. And since we know nothing of what was before this cosmic egg, by default it stands to be the ultimate starting point.

And this is different from a "time before time".

Basically you are saying there was a time when time didn’t exist. Now read that again and tell me if there is no time before time

It does? Please explain how you came to this conclusion. Please tell us the specific scientific principles that support it.

No, no, no. the burden to prove something can come nothing is on you guys. Quantum mechanics doesn’t solve this for yall.

No. Again: that's not how it works.

That is exactly what you are doing. “No physical evidence for God, therefore my beliefs are true”.

It has, actually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation

Lets think rationally here. Is there not at least two things involved to cause the fluctuation or is there absolutely nothing at all that makes the fluctuation occur? Its like saying for no reason at all a cow and roar like a lion. Now if that were ever possible, would it not have to have something to make it roar like a lion or are you saying that it could just roar like a lion without anything helping it to do it.

No, I think you haven't established that an "ultimate starting point" must exist.

You haven’t proven anything is eternal or that anything has always existed

"Ultimate starting point" is just a term you came up with. You haven't demonstrated that such a thing actually exists.

This is crazy. Ive done this time and again yet you guys still haven’t produce anything eternal. You keep saying “how do we know that the universe isn’t”. Show me how it can be. How can something expanding and has a beginning always existed?

 

[AK4]

ak4 your beating your head against a brick wall with this lot m8 jmo

I agree

 

[AK4]

So what you have to do is to demonstrate that there is a first, or uncaused cause, and then your argument is made. But having done that you would of course still need to show that this first cause is God.

I have. Is there anything we know of in creation/the universe that fits the definition of eternal---no beginning and no end? If there is, please show me because i have never heard of this yet.

Showing that the first cause is God---well the word God is just a title. So as a title, believers in a god title the ultimate starting point as God. Non believers either think that there really isnt a ultimate starting point [therefore this universe has to be eternal] or they title this starting point as something else [but still dont acknowledge it with the title of God].

 

[challupa]

I agree

AK you are an IDist. In many ways I see ID as even less honest than a bible based creationism. At least creationists just say God done it, it's what the bible says and if anything in the bible doesn't match science, then the bible's right. They are wrong, but at least they are sticking to their beliefs.

ID attempts to wed science with the bible by not taking the genesis story as literal. They try to make days into eons and all sorts of manipulative gymnastics to get the bible to be somewhat more scientific. But it's not true. The bible is not scientific. It is a philosophical belief. It is a spiritual belief. But it is not science. It is liberal theology. Don't get me wrong, it is a step towards understanding that the bible is not a science book. The trouble is you still cling to it being all about god and so it's still important that your favorite book coincides with what we now know in science. It cannot happen any more than the Quran or any other holy scripture. They are spiritual books based on religious beliefs, not science.

The universe has every possibility of existing as an ever cycling phenomenom. With that understanding their doesn't need to be a "first cause". We don't need to say God did it. Call the universe god if you like, I don't care, but don't tell me it's personal because it quite obviously is not.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

How not?

Two reasons:

- until you demonstrate that the Bible is an authoritative source, any Bible verse you cite is just an unsupported assertion, and we have no particular reason to accept it as necessarily true.

- even that aside, AFAICT, that verse is irrelevant to the discussion.

Yeah I have. Almost all science agrees that there has to be a beginning so that in itself kills the possibility that anything in our physical universal is eternal

You keep on saying this, but when we ask you for any support for your statement, you ignore our request. Why is that?

Its funny you guys keep changing the words as if you not all saying the same thing. Special pleading, logical fallacies….i cant even remember then all now.

Indeed. There are as many terms to describe the problems with your argument as there are problems with your argument.

How can a book about a god, rather the bible or whatever not have any authority in a debate about a god? Its equivalent to saying a book about the holocaust cant be used to prove that it happened. That’s funny

A book can only be used in an argument to the extent that it's reliable, and if you want to cite a book as support for your argument, you need to be prepared to demonstrate that it is reliable.

The same thing is true of the Holocaust: we don't accept just any book about it. The mere fact that they're both nominally about the Holocaust doesn't put Ernst Zundel's "Did Six Million Really Die?" on the same level as, say, Yehuda Bauer's "History of the Holocaust". Before we can accept the Bible as an authoritative source, you need to demonstrate that it's accurate.

And even then, the mere fact that something came from a book is no guarantee that it's correct. Even well-meaning, dilligent authors make mistakes occasionally. When it comes right down to it, when you pull statements out of even the most authoritative books, you still have to be prepared to defend those statements on their own merits.

I have. The major tenet of my religion is that there has to be a ultimate starting point. My religion calls it God the Father.

Fine if you believe that, and I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong. What I'm saying is that you haven't demonstrated to us that you're necessarily right.

Science says there has to be an ultimate starting point to something created.

No, it doesn't. If you think otherwise, prove me wrong.

-everything is in God
-So that answers “everything needs a cause” because God would be the cause of it all
-Since God is the cause of it all and everything is in Him, that answers why God doesn’t need a cause.

So... you're saying that God is not part of "everything"?

But as I pointed out, everything that exists is part of "everything". Therefore, if God is not part of "everything", then God does not exist.

Unless, of course, you're using your terms incorrectly.

Answer this, Can an expanding universe be an THE ultimate starting point?

Maybe. I don't see why not, and you haven't given any rational argument for why I should think otherwise.

If something is expanding, that in itself says there must have been a beginning.

Or that it's cyclical. Or that it was the product of something else.

Anyhow, I don't see how you can make the leap from "the visible universe was once very small" to "everything needs a cause", as you seem to be doing. Not without a whole bunch of intermediate steps that you're not sharing with us.

If there is a beginning, that means at one point there couldn’t have been a universe at all.

I don't see how that follows. Can you step us through your logic there?

To say that a “cosmic egg” had always existed in a state that it couldn’t have stayed in is ludicrous.

Hey! A new fallacy! The straw man. Kudos - I can tell you're really putting an effort in now.

Basically you are saying there was a time when time didn’t exist. Now read that again and tell me if there is no time before time

No, I'm not saying that.

No, no, no. the burden to prove something can come nothing is on you guys. Quantum mechanics doesn’t solve this for yall.

No... again, here's how it works:

- until we can figure out whether a statement is true, we can't declare it true or false; effectively, its truthfulness is undefined. It might be true or it might be false; we can't tell yet.

- if I make an argument where my conclusion depends on that statement being absolutely true, then if I want to demonstrate that my conclusion is necessarily correct, I have to first prove that the statement is true.

- if I can't demonstrate that the statement is true, then my conclusion based on that statement also can't be demonstrated as true: if the statement is true, then so is the conclusion; if the statement is false, so is the conclusion. And since the statement can be either true or false, my conclusion can also be true or false.



So... for what I think is the fourth time: UNLESS you demonstrate that all the statements on which your argument depends are true, then your conclusion has not been demonstrated true either. For this argument, this means that if we're left with "all effects need causes... but they might not", then your conclusion of "therefore God exists" hasn't been demonstrated.

That is exactly what you are doing. “No physical evidence for God, therefore my beliefs are true”.

No, that's not what I'm doing. If you think I am, then you haven't read my posts carefully enough.

Lets think rationally here.

... for a change.

Is there not at least two things involved to cause the fluctuation or is there absolutely nothing at all that makes the fluctuation occur? Its like saying for no reason at all a cow and roar like a lion. Now if that were ever possible, would it not have to have something to make it roar like a lion or are you saying that it could just roar like a lion without anything helping it to do it.

Can you re-phrase this so it makes sense? I have no idea what you're trying to say.

You haven’t proven anything is eternal or that anything has always existed

And I don't need to.

This is crazy. Ive done this time and again yet you guys still haven’t produce anything eternal.

No, you didn't.

You keep saying “how do we know that the universe isn’t”. Show me how it can be.

I don't need to.

How can something expanding and has a beginning always existed?

I don't know. But until you can show that such a thing is impossible, you haven't proven your argument.

 

[AK4]

There is sufficient evidence at present to justify the theory that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so. This evidence includes the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems that are based on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and the recently introduced Quantum Cosmological Models of the early universe. The singularity theorems lead to an explication of the beginning of the universe that involves the notion of a Big Bang singularity, and the Quantum Cosmological Models represent the beginning largely in terms of the notion of a vacuum fluctuation.


Theories that represent the universe as infinitely old or as caused to begin are shown to be at odds with or at least unsupported by these and other current cosmological notions.

Im just wonder if this means anything from that article:

The following article was originally published in PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE in 1988 (Volume 55, No. 1, pp. 39-57).

Now an article that refutes this

The Caused Beginning of the Universe: A Response to Quentin Smith

<H3 align=center>IV. Conclusion

In conclusion, then, I think it is clear that Smith has failed to carry the second prong of his argument, namely, that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so. In his attempt to show that there is no good reason to accept the theistic hypothesis, he misconstrued the causal proposition at issue, appealed to false analogies of ex nihilo creation, contradicted himself in holding the singularity to be the source of the universe, failed to show why the origin of the universe ex nihilo is reasonable on models adjusted or unadjusted for quantum effects, and, most importantly, trivialized his whole argument through the reduction of causation to predictability in principle, thus making his conclusion an actual entailment of theism. Nor has he been any more successful in proving that the theistic hypothesis is unreasonable in light of the evidence. For he ignores the important epistemological questions concerning the circumstances under which it would be rational to accept divine creatio ex nihilo; he has failed to show that vacuum fluctuation models are or are likely to become plausible, empirical explanations of the universe's origin; on the contrary, such models are probably best regarded as naturalistic metaphysical alternatives to the theistic hypothesis, but as such are fraught with conceptual difficulties; and, most importantly, such models, on pain of ontological absurdity, do not in fact support Smith's (ii), so that they do not render unreasonable the hypothesis that God created the universe, including whatever wider spatio-temporal realms of reality might be imagined to exist.

</H3>

 

[AK4]

There is sufficient evidence at present to justify the theory that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so. This evidence includes the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems that are based on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and the recently introduced Quantum Cosmological Models of the early universe. The singularity theorems lead to an explication of the beginning of the universe that involves the notion of a Big Bang singularity, and the Quantum Cosmological Models represent the beginning largely in terms of the notion of a vacuum fluctuation.


Theories that represent the universe as infinitely old or as caused to begin are shown to be at odds with or at least unsupported by these and other current cosmological notions.

Lets have another
The Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics | Reasons To Believe

<H3>Problems with Hawking’s Interpretation

In Hawking’s model, time is real; it merely goes in a circle. It also assumes characteristics of space near the Big Bang, hence there is not ‘truly’ a beginning. Hence its problems are different from the DeWitt interpretation.
Hawking’s first failure is the entropy problem. His goal was to remove the beginning as a creation event, as well as do away with the need for ‘initial conditions’ that such a beginning would entail. The problem of initial conditions is related to the fine-tuning of the universe. This is one reason why, to an atheist, they have to go. Initial conditions are also, by their very nature ‘arbitrary’, hence beyond explanation by a theory of everything, hence objectionable to Hawking. Nonetheless, it turns out that even if there was no initial point of time, the problem of initial conditions doesn’t go away. This has been shown by Penrose (The Emperor’s New Mind) and Guth (paper: The Impossibility of a Bouncing Universe). Penrose has shown that the maximum entropy of the observable universe is 10123. The number of ways of fitting together (like legos) all the pieces of the observable universe is the exponential of this: EXP(10123). This number is so big it’s hard to come up with examples that would permit one to fathom it. Only the tiniest fraction of these states are ones that would permit life. Penrose also shows that the entropy at the start of our universe appears zero (his WEYL=0 condition). Now, Hawking’s model is cyclical in time, hence the Big Bang must eventually become a Big Crunch. That means that the condition of the singularity at the Big Bang must be identical to the Big Crunch. This means one of two things, both unpalatable to a Hawking view: either the entropy at the singularity is zero, in which case Hawking must find an entropy reversing process in nature, or the entropy at the singularity is some big number, in which case Hawking must explain how an unintelligent process somehow hit the bulls-eye in producing a life-giving universe (the initial conditions problem). Either solution commits Boltzman’s Blunder. The second answer turns out to be impossible, as shown by Guth. One must find an entropy reversing process, or give up the game. But cosmologists seem to agree this is impossible.
Or Hawking must admit he has a theory with a quantum singularity (an infinite collection of 4-spaces each with zero volume). This would permit his outgoing and incoming world lines to meet at the singularity without being continuous in entropy. In this case, Hawking has admitted the existence of a boundary to his universe which is uncaused and has created things with lower ontology (God by any other name . . )
Hawking’s second problem is the problem of needing contingency. As I have stated (and has been testified to by MW advocates such as David Deutsch): MW is purely deterministic. Yet Hawking requires quantum contingency at two points in his model: a quantum fluctuation beginning out of a Feynman singularity, as well as fluctuations that convert time into space as one moves backwards toward the Bang. He is not entitled to intrinsic chance. MW and Copenhagen are mutually exclusive interpretations.
Hawking’s third problem is the need for a closed universe geometry. As our latest measurements of the cosmic background radiation show, the universe appears to be flat.
If a closed universe were true, Hawking would have another problem (4th) with his quantum fluctuation beginning. For a fluctuation to work, it must survive for indefinite time. For this to be true, the universe must have zero total energy. But if the universe has zero energy, the equations of general relativity predict a flat universe. So either:
Fluctuation is true = zero energy = flat universe = no boundary proposal is false.
Closed universe is true = some energy = no fluctuation = no boundary proposal is false
Hawking’s fifth problem also relates to the fluctuation. The probability of a fluctuation drops to zero as the time interval allowed drops to zero. But time doesn’t exist yet, hence how could there be a fluctuation?
Hawking’s sixth problem, as pointed out well by William Lane Craig in his essay “What Place, Then, for a Creator?”: Hawking on God and Creation, is his realist interpretations of the Feynman process and imaginary time. As Craig points out, Hawking does this arbitrarily. If time really has an imaginary component, doesn’t Hawking have to prove it (similar to the onus place on DeWitt to show that time doesn’t exist at all)?
Hawkings seventh problem: Feynman's sum over histories approach to quantum mechanics seems to me to be much more amenable to a hidden-variables interpretation as opposed to many-worlds. It is clear from Feynman's exposition that particles traverse the 'many worlds' in a virtual state; the waves interfering and producing a higher or lower probability at each position which is realized once a measurement is made by an outside observer. One does not live within one of the virtual paths! For example, in The Strange Theory of Light & Matter, Feynman explains his theory in reference to a diffraction grating (a generalization of the famous two slit problem). The whole point of the two-slit problem is to demonstrate that the observer cannot observe what is going on with the photons without destroying their behavior. It is clear that there are two distinct ‘worlds’ being referenced: the outer world in which the observer and his measuring device live, and the inner virtual world in which the light appears to travel multiple paths. Which one do we live in? If one attempts to interfere with the virtual particles, one collapses the quantum behavior and gets a classical scattering. Later on, Feynman describes his calculation of the magnetic moment of the electron using virtual particle diagrams. That’s what his theory is for!

</H3>

 

[averageJOE]

I have. Is there anything we know of in creation/the universe that fits the definition of eternal---no beginning and no end? If there is, please show me because i have never heard of this yet.

You keep bringing up the word "eternal". "Eternal" life is something that is repeated over and over again in your bible that is something that can achieved, or rewarded with, and basically something everyone can acheive upon meeting certain criteria. Upon being rewarded with this eternal life wouldn't that moment become the starting point of an eternal life? Thus making us the same as god?

Also, there are words of suffering in an eternal fire in your bible. Is this a fire that also has no begining and no end? Something your god didn't create and therefore has no control over?

 

[AK4]

There is no proof ‘that there must be an ultimate starting point’.
We can conceive of an ‘ultimate starting point’ answering to something further in order for it to be the ultimate starting point. Whatever we can conceive we can always imagine more: we can conceive of infinity without contradiction. And a first cause (or ‘ultimate starting point’, in your terms) must logically answer to a necessary existence, which doesn’t by any means imply a deity.

Basically you are saying what most who believe in a god would also think, "is there something even before God". If that is possible, as you agree, that would then make God not God. Same thing applies to an ultimate starting point. Honestly, whether referring to a god or a starting point, can we really concieve what can come before these things. By our physical observance we can try to ponder but we cant grasp ahold of anything until we discover it. Same thing applies we trying to look past the ultimate end point. We can try to ponder that there is more, but if it is truly the end then there is no more

As far as it being a diety,if all things came from one thing, that one thing by default is greater than what it brought forth and since it is greater than what it brought and what was brought forth gets everything from the one thing then that one thing is like a deity to what it brought forth.

Of course there is no proof that the material world is self-existent. It is a metaphysical hypothesis, and no different to speculating that there is a first cause.
But you have to defend your argument, which is to prove that there is an ultimate starting point.

Is there a way to answer the question of "is there something beyond the ultimate starting point?" In logical sense, if we werent talking about God, all would answer "no you cant have something before an USP". Even the words "ultimate" "starting" and "point" have a finite defintion

Ultimate--can you go further than what is to be the ultimate
Starting---this points to a beginning. Add ultimate to it and it has to be by default the very first start
Point---a definite spot. place, beginning or ending. Add the two preceeding adjectives and its locked.

But for some reason when trying to put this to a god, those definitions dont fit. Why?