There was no ‘sooner’ or ‘later’. I’m saying time began with the world, which is exactly the same as you are saying.
But that is neither here nor there. I still don't know what that means. You said "time began with the world". So before it began, what was there? Where did it come from? Are you saying that there was a point at which neither time nor the world existed?
The only difference is that my argument for an uncaused world is non-contradictory, whereas your claim for a personal being that created the world using worldly phenomena is unintelligible.
Well, I still don't know your position. You give only so much...you said time began with the world, but offer no explanation as to how or WHY such a thing could occur. So I am left scratching my head still wondering what does this mean, and it appears to be just as unintelligible as you claim my position is.
So while I’m presenting a logically possible hypothesis, your claim is that a Necessary Being was unable to create the world without using contingent means and thereafter was confined to temporality for eternity so he could have a relationship with his created creatures. Now come on - that really is dog’s breakfast.
Then I guess there is really no argument from contingency then. If God had a eternal will to create the universe, then there is no way he could NOT create the universe, so the creation event was...necessary.
There was no ‘everything’, no internal conditions and no external conditions. ‘Conditions’ began with the world.
I still don't know what this means unless I know how the universe and time could begin without an external cause.
No more than you, with no explanation why God brought the world into being! Eh?
My guess would be that God brought the world into being because he wanted creatures to share his love with.
But it isn’t maximally great if it can be shown that there are deficiencies, and I have shown that there are such.
You think so?
Even God cannot create something from nothing: that’s logically impossible!
Logically impossible? Why? We can both conceive of a being that can create from nothing, so it can't be that impossible, now could it?
And if God is a self-sufficient, maximally great being, then he cannot produce from himself something that is inferior and contradictory to his supreme essence; and in any case creation cannot serve any coherent purpose if God is self-sufficient.
I don't get it.
Er..I don’t think so! Both terms definitionally fall short of ‘omnipotence’. Prof Craig is quite aware of that, too.
Um, yes it does. If God is unable to do X, and you can conceive of a being that IS capable of doing X, then that being is greater than God (as far as omnipotence is concerned), but that can't be the case IF God is a maximally great being, at which there couldn't exist a being that is capable of doing X if God is unable to.
But of course! The world is contingent and every scrap of matter and its properties can be conceived to not exist; in other words time and space doesn’t exist from logical necessity. So, if your God exists and cannot cause the end of time then he is not the omnipotent creator.
Um, cot, then it must not be possible for it to be done! If you can't conceive of a being that COULD end time, then it must not be possible, right? I mean, think about it: If a being could end time, how much TIME would elapse after TIME was ended? That is quite irrational, don't you think?
As I said before, God can do anything that is logically possible. It just isn't possible for time to be ended, and that is EXACTLY why I asked you if you could think of a being which could get the job done...if you can think of something greater, then by all means, enlighten me.
It is even possible for your God to sustain existence without time, heaven for example.
If it is possible for my God to sustain existence without time, then it is possible for my God to exist. But you previously stated that God's existence is impossible. So which is it? It can't be possible for God to exist, and also true that God DOESN'T exist at the same time. That is not how necessary truths work, cot. X cannot be possibly necessarily true, but actually false. If X is possibly necessarily true, then X must be true, because if X was false, it wouldn't be possibly necessarily true to begin with.
Keep on blocking, cot.
And life on earth, minus time, would be no different to any other logically possible miracle, such as a dead body returning to life and ascending to heaven.
That can't be the case regarding our earth. On earth, things change, and change takes time. So I don't know what life on earth minus time would look like?
But the main point is why your maximally great God disempowered himself to create human life for his own comfort and needs? Answer me that?
Maybe it is better for humans to experience the goodness of God than otherwise, and since God can only do what is good, thus, human life.
1) If the Being exists in reality, and if experience is part of reality, then the Being must also exist in experience. But this is impossible since everything in experience can be denied since it is contingent; therefore nothing in experience it is necessary, ever-present and eternal. Therefore there is a possible world, the actual world of experience, in which no Being necessarily exists.
Then once again, if God exists, then experience is necessary. Think about it; if God is necessary, then he experiences his own existence, which would make his experience as necessary as his existence. And if he had an eternal will to create the universe, then our universe cannot be said to be contingent, because it cannot be any different than what God eternally willed it to be. Now, the argument from contingency seems fine if you negate the existence of God, which would mean that the universe didn't have to be here, but it is. But this itself calls out for explanation, why is it here? So it seems to me as if the argument from contingency is a great objection to your argument.
2) This argument is predicated on the question of whether something necessarily exists in a particular state of affairs that cannot be logically denied. My mind is a state of affairs, a possible world. And if no being imposes itself on my mind, then there is a possible world in which the being doesn’t exist. Now I can conceive of any logically possible being (whether or not there is any such being in reality), but when I am not conceiving such a being, real or conceptual, it isn’t present to my mind. Therefore there is a possible world in which there is no necessary and ever-present being.
As long as you can conceive of a MGB, then it must be possible for a MGB to exist. The attributes of this being also reflects the attributes of the being that is indentified in the kalam. To different arguments, same results. That is more than a coincidence.
But that’s not the argument. The argument is that God is A (the cause) was followed by B (the effect) as time and motion. The one follows the other, successively; and that is precisely the meaning of cause and effect (which we know for sure operates in time)!
Only if the cause was temporally prior to the effect, and based on the case that I present, it isn't.
But no matter how you look at it, even if cause and effect were simultaneously possible, it still remains the case that the creator, a necessary being, is dependent upon a contingent principle. As Christian apologist, Dinesh D’Souza, said: ‘The Big Bang was a miracle’, since ‘it cannot be explained by any known law of nature’.
I've argued that the existence of the universe is necessary only if there was a necessary cause that eternally willed for the universe to be created. So there is no "contingency principle", as you put it.
