The "something can't come from nothing" argument

[metis]

Infinity is not only impossible to prove, it is also impossible to disprove. Also:

Infinity (symbol: &#8734 is an abstract concept describing something without any limit and is relevant in a number of fields, predominantly mathematics and physics...

Cosmologists have long sought to discover whether infinity exists in our physical universe: Are there an infinite number of stars? Does the universe have infinite volume? Does space "go on forever"? This is an open question of cosmology. Note that the question of being infinite is logically separate from the question of having boundaries. The two-dimensional surface of the Earth, for example, is finite, yet has no edge. By travelling in a straight line one will eventually return to the exact spot one started from. The universe, at least in principle, might have a similar topology. If so, one might eventually return to one's starting point after travelling in a straight line through the universe for long enough.

If, on the other hand, the universe were not curved like a sphere but had a flat topology, it could be both unbounded and infinite. The curvature of the universe can be measured through multipole moments in the spectrum of the cosmic background radiation. As to date, analysis of the radiation patterns recorded by the WMAP spacecraft hints that the universe has a flat topology. This would be consistent with an infinite physical universe... -- Infinity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[1robin]

Continuation from 1709



We can only take perfection to mean exactly as intended and correct for the purpose. And that has no negative impact at all on the conclusion; in fact it enables the conclusion, for God's state is self-evidently compromised.

That is the whole issue. What does perfection mean as intended for God. Whatever it is, it is so not self evident Aquinas said we can never conceive it. He said Omni characteristics cannot be conceived of my man. We can only use terms that eliminate non Omni-things. For example what does spiritual mean? I am not sure beyond the fact it means not material. What does perfectly moral mean? I have no idea other than it rules out faults. I can't picture infinity only the finites it isn't. Well that is profound and intuitive once stated but it is boring. So I grant leeway in talking about these things or determining the bible's intent. However why would I agree that a person who rejects faith has a certain knowledge of it if I disagree with it. It makes sense that God would create without any need to. Why would I concede the opposite? I have given many examples of where this takes place everyday but you insist that technically the issues do not correlate. I do not agree but to give you even the benefit of the doubt I would have to conclude you know what Aquinas and countless scholars say is unknowable and that you know more about the unknowable than I do and I would not even know how to begin to justify that if I was inclined to try.

An answer to this is given down the page.

Ship I snot near enough the rocks at this point I guess. I kid, I kid.

Anyway now it is time to sum up.

Lighthouse!!! Hard about.

Argument 1.

1. Assume God created the world

I don't but I deduct it. Anyway we will pretend I invented this out of speculation.

2. It is irrational to say a personal being freely and intentionally created the world for no purpose

Pray tell why? I quite often see philosophers not only affirm this but conclude it as the only possibility and deduct it from perfectly sound argumentation. If I could remember .1% of what I read you would never have a response, but I can't. I do however remember reading many technical philosophical justifications for each step in each major argument for God by board sitting philosophers. That is the kind of thing that is not intuitive to me. The argument is it's justification not always so but given they do so in volumes of works I am included to believe they know what they are about. In fact I think I know where several by Craig are at home if you want them.

3. He did create the world for a purpose

Yes, but not a necessity.

4. Therefore there was a need or purpose that benefitted God

This where your transom gives out. You have smuggled necessity into a purpose. Myriads of even human purposes have no necessity. Now once determined they imply necessity but not in their determination. I purpose to contend with you. I have no necessity to.

5. The Supreme Being requires nothing since he is perfectly complete and entire

So far you have not entailed a need, you have unjustly assumed it.

6. If 5 is not true then God is not the Supreme Being.

5 is not in jeopardy yet but may need tweaking in the future.

7. Premise 5 is true by definition

I agree.

8. God had needs, desires, or unfulfilled wishes (4)

A desire or a wish is not a need. You read any literature on this issue and you will almost always find "freely" coupled with every mention of "decided" in this context. He was not compelled by anything.

9. Therefore God is not the all-sufficient Supreme Being

That only follows from flawed assumptions made above.

If the premises are true then the conclusion that follows must also be true.

They weren't.

We can summarise the above argument like this:

P1: If God is the Supreme Being then he wants for nothing
P2: God wanted a relationship with his creation
Conclusion: God is not the Supreme Being

God decided to create a beings for a relationship. Desired is a bit loaded but what it does not have is necessity. You could say once God determined to create, if he was prevented, then he is not sufficient. That is not what your saying. Your saying God's existence mandated his deciding to create and that is founded on nothing.

Argument 2.

1. Assume God created the world.

2. God had a coherent purpose (since it would be incoherent to say an intelligent, conscious being created the world with no purpose).

3. God is goodness itself

4. God created the world to bestow his sovereign goodness upon it.

5. But there was no world prior to creation!

6. Therefore the world and its creatures were non-existent prior to creation

7. Thus there was no benefit to the created creatures

8. A coherent reason for God creating the world is required, as in #2

Conclusion: Therefore God created the world for his own pleasure or satisfaction

I may derive pleasure from saying "shipwreck" but my doing so does not effect my identity. I have freewill and no need of saying it. My choosing to, doing so, not doing so, or not valuing it does not have any earing on my identity as a person with freewill. I know I am not Omni-anything but it does not matter whatever I am is not affected in either direction by enjoying saying it.

You need to show God was compelled to choose creation and/or was lacking in a great making property but either doing so or not.

But that is hugely problematic.

It cannot be argued that the world is necessary to God without falling foul of a contradiction. But God, it is said, did create the world. And that being the case we find that a God that is sufficient in all things is not sufficient in all things. Further, there can be no logical justification for bringing creatures into existence; for creatures that didn’t previously exist cannot be said in anyway to be better off. Therefore the creation of the world can only have been to God’s advantage. But the world is not a necessary aspect of God and therefore nothing can be subtracted from God by the world never existing and no addition can be made to God by the world’s creation. So there are only two possible conclusions and they are that either “God” is not the Supreme Being, but a deist-type external cause of the world, that takes no interest in the creation other than sustaining its continued but indefinite existence, or there is no God at all.

Everything here is trumped by free will. As I said almost every mention of choice in this context emphatically insists it was free choice. You must show God was only God if and when he created. A decision to create made without anything compelling it is not what your discussing and not my God.

I have never found a site that proposed this argument though they may exist but you can find countless professional responses to it. If you are not satisfied you may want to look a few up. Your argument would be valid if you could ever show need but IMO you have not and all the rest which is valid is train wrecked (did not see that one did you?)on the same spot in the tracks. Since I can agree with everything except that point you can reduce your workload to it alone if you want. Get need instead of free choice and you may have something. God was not scratching an itch in creating. He was not compelled by anything. Agree or not do you get my rejection?

 

[1robin]

Infinity is not only impossible to prove, it is also impossible to disprove. Also:

Infinity (symbol: &#8734 is an abstract concept describing something without any limit and is relevant in a number of fields, predominantly mathematics and physics...

Cosmologists have long sought to discover whether infinity exists in our physical universe: Are there an infinite number of stars? Does the universe have infinite volume? Does space "go on forever"? This is an open question of cosmology. Note that the question of being infinite is logically separate from the question of having boundaries. The two-dimensional surface of the Earth, for example, is finite, yet has no edge. By travelling in a straight line one will eventually return to the exact spot one started from. The universe, at least in principle, might have a similar topology. If so, one might eventually return to one's starting point after travelling in a straight line through the universe for long enough.

If, on the other hand, the universe were not curved like a sphere but had a flat topology, it could be both unbounded and infinite. The curvature of the universe can be measured through multipole moments in the spectrum of the cosmic background radiation. As to date, analysis of the radiation patterns recorded by the WMAP spacecraft hints that the universe has a flat topology. This would be consistent with an infinite physical universe... -- Infinity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your article is abound unbounded finites not true infinites. Circles are the same thing. They have no end but do have a finite circumference.

I can settle this, provide one actual infinite for every hundred finites I can, and you will have 1/100th of a justification.

 

[idav]

Your article is abound unbounded finites not true infinites. Circles are the same thing. They have no end but do have a finite circumference.

I can settle this, provide one actual infinite for every hundred finites I can, and you will have 1/100th of a justification.

What difference does it make whether god or existence is a true infinite or not? I don't think making it finite makes it any less god just cause its minus 1 an actual infinite.

 

[Sapiens]

Hickory dickery trip
A mouse on a mobius strip.
The strip revolved, and the mouse dissolved,
in a chronodimensional skip

 

[ArtieE]

You might be interested in this article about Time and the Block Universe. It explains time from the perspective of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. As the article says: "The "Big Bang" does not represent the "start" of the universe." Time and the Block Universe

 

[cottage]

I am sure he used it as you stated but I have seen him many times state he is using so and so' version. I have seen him use at least three that are not his. I am not sure he has invented one himself. I saw that debate but can't remember what source Craig used if any. It was not a potent debate. If you want to see the only person in my opinion that could contend with Craig look up Craig verses Sean Carroll.

Yes, I know about Sean Carroll, he is a very articulate and worthy representative of his particular discipline. I sometimes find it difficult to keep up with his lectures because of the speed and evident passion in his delivery. Has a great sense of humour too.

I think the first half may have indicated a flaw in my understanding what you said. If so dismiss my response. The last half is kind of weird. In modal being logic it is assumed that the universe is contingent. That means it absolutely requires a necessary cause that must exist that can't be seen. Your question is like asking "Oh yeah, show me a picture of the wind". Well it is a given that wind can't be seen but is a reliable deduction from the evidence. It would be as bad as my asking you to show me dark matter. Worse in fact. It is not really a meaningful question. I do not think you even object to necessary beings existing so what is even the motivation here?

No, no, a contingent object does not “absolutely require a necessary cause”! (I think I explained all this in one of our last bouts?). The argument from contingency is itself a contingent proposition. Think about it! Causality is a contingent principle.

Gottfried Leibniz’s Argument from Contingency holds that if “The universe exists” is true then something must account for the fact that it is true, and a thing that exists but which may not exist is to be finally accountable to a thing that actually exists and for which the non-existence is impossible. The problem of course is that is cause is itself contingent, which is the very medium that the argument needs to reach its conclusion! So the thing that has no possibility of not existing is to be accounted for by a further thing that has the possibility of not existing!

Necessity belongs only to tautologies (as below), and definitions, but not to existence.

Necessarily existent beings cannot be demonstrated. Consider the following deceptively similar propositions.

(A = A) A is necessarily A in all possible worlds

If A is possibly necessarily A, then A is necessarily A in all possible worlds.

If A is possibly necessary existent then A necessarily exists in all possible worlds.

The first two sentences are expressing the same thing, but the third sentence is informing us that the existence of A is necessarily true. Certainly that sentence is expressing a necessary truth in the sense that it has exactly the same logical structure as the one above, but does it not follow that A exists, for as Kant said: no existential proposition follows from the laws of logic alone. And while we can demonstrate that A=A is necessarily the case in all possible worlds, “A’ does not exist” implies no contradiction.

No you are. These complaints alone do nothing. Even if you are right and I made "quips" at times I followed them by explaining why I made them in detail. At least you could agree or not. Since you showed no waffles' I can't even consider that I made any. This is actually such a vague issue I looked up scholarly responses to it and simply stated them in my words here. Are they waffling as well? Where are the waffles? Why are they such?

I beg your pardon. In fact I do owe you a reply to this part of the passage:

“You made an argument about God's having no need of creation then concluded from that argument God must need us. How did that work? Need will be a tricky word here. God does not need anything else to be more fully God. However that does not mean things do not have value to him. The same way an artist is no less of an artist without painting a Mona Lisa. It is an expression of his nature that has value but no necessity. Now that complete undermines the assumptions of your argument here.”



What you’ve written here simply identifies the contradiction, i.e. a God that has no needs by definition, and yet seeks a relationship with his created beings! And why is he “expressing his nature” in the form of an inferior product? An artist or skilled artisan produces work that reflects an aspect of himself in what is created, but here we have Supreme Being creating what is by comparison a very shoddy product!

This was the part I described as “waffling”.

“The only recourse is to try and split hairs about what need, value, or purpose mean. Every argument with a non-theist winds up at the same place. Semantic technicality. I may very well be wrong but it always reminds of a lawyer defending a guilty client. He knows evidence is against him so abandons it in favor of finding some technical procedural issue to get off a guilty man. God can value a thing and not require it to be God.“

 

[idav]

You might be interested in this article about Time and the Block Universe. It explains time from the perspective of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. As the article says: "The "Big Bang" does not represent the "start" of the universe." Time and the Block Universe

Thats quite interesting. I like the thought, "there is nothing outside the universe". Kind of a mind bender that one.

 

[cottage]

That is the whole issue. What does perfection mean as intended for God. Whatever it is, it is so not self evident Aquinas said we can never conceive it. He said Omni characteristics cannot be conceived of my man. We can only use terms that eliminate non Omni-things. For example what does spiritual mean? I am not sure beyond the fact it means not material. What does perfectly moral mean? I have no idea other than it rules out faults. I can't picture infinity only the finites it isn't. Well that is profound and intuitive once stated but it is boring. So I grant leeway in talking about these things or determining the bible's intent. However why would I agree that a person who rejects faith has a certain knowledge of it if I disagree with it. It makes sense that God would create without any need to. Why would I concede the opposite? I have given many examples of where this takes place everyday but you insist that technically the issues do not correlate. I do not agree but to give you even the benefit of the doubt I would have to conclude you know what Aquinas and countless scholars say is unknowable and that you know more about the unknowable than I do and I would not even know how to begin to justify that if I was inclined to try.



Ship I snot near enough the rocks at this point I guess. I kid, I kid.

Lighthouse!!! Hard about.

I don't but I deduct it. Anyway we will pretend I invented this out of speculation.

Pray tell why? I quite often see philosophers not only affirm this but conclude it as the only possibility and deduct it from perfectly sound argumentation. If I could remember .1% of what I read you would never have a response, but I can't. I do however remember reading many technical philosophical justifications for each step in each major argument for God by board sitting philosophers. That is the kind of thing that is not intuitive to me. The argument is it's justification not always so but given they do so in volumes of works I am included to believe they know what they are about. In fact I think I know where several by Craig are at home if you want them.

Yes, but not a necessity.

This where your transom gives out. You have smuggled necessity into a purpose. Myriads of even human purposes have no necessity. Now once determined they imply necessity but not in their determination. I purpose to contend with you. I have no necessity to.

So far you have not entailed a need, you have unjustly assumed it.

5 is not in jeopardy yet but may need tweaking in the future.

I agree.

A desire or a wish is not a need. You read any literature on this issue and you will almost always find "freely" coupled with every mention of "decided" in this context. He was not compelled by anything.

That only follows from flawed assumptions made above.

They weren't.

God decided to create a beings for a relationship. Desired is a bit loaded but what it does not have is necessity. You could say once God determined to create, if he was prevented, then he is not sufficient. That is not what your saying. Your saying God's existence mandated his deciding to create and that is founded on nothing.


I may derive pleasure from saying "shipwreck" but my doing so does not effect my identity. I have freewill and no need of saying it. My choosing to, doing so, not doing so, or not valuing it does not have any earing on my identity as a person with freewill. I know I am not Omni-anything but it does not matter whatever I am is not affected in either direction by enjoying saying it.

You need to show God was compelled to choose creation and/or was lacking in a great making property but either doing so or not.




Everything here is trumped by free will. As I said almost every mention of choice in this context emphatically insists it was free choice. You must show God was only God if and when he created. A decision to create made without anything compelling it is not what your discussing and not my God.

I have never found a site that proposed this argument though they may exist but you can find countless professional responses to it. If you are not satisfied you may want to look a few up. Your argument would be valid if you could ever show need but IMO you have not and all the rest which is valid is train wrecked (did not see that one did you?)on the same spot in the tracks. Since I can agree with everything except that point you can reduce your workload to it alone if you want. Get need instead of free choice and you may have something. God was not scratching an itch in creating. He was not compelled by anything. Agree or not do you get my rejection?

I'm disappointed in you. I give you proper arguments and you cannot even do me the courtesy of a proper response. Most of your replies are just retorts, and much of what you say doesn't make any real sense. I can tell that you've just banged off a response saying whatever entered your head, regardless of coherency or its being relative the arguments I've given and the points made. I don't know why you even bothered to reply at all if thats all you can do.

 

[cottage]

An explanation of thermodynamics will never get an F-14 airborne. Only energy will. They are not equal. Mechanism and causal agent are not identical. I do not have to know the first thing about how God did it or how anything does anything to posit them as an agent. Only if asked for mechanism would I require the nuts and bolts. I am not sure if the difference is meaningful in this case but it definitely exists. That is why those two arguments come under different labels.

What you’ve written has nothing whatsoever to do with the cosmological arguments. You were trying to convince me that the two cosmological arguments were different in their aims. If you remember you said you were arguing for the Leibizian version. I then explained that they are both causal, and they are! Nowhere in either argument will you find any mechanistic, practical, or doctrinal explanation for an external cause.

I think you have. You dismissed cause and effect for the formation of the universe. Since it is present in every observation ever taken it's uncertainty is the most minimal possible of a claim that is not certain.

You’ve been trying to tell me that the Kalam argument is unimpeachable. It isn’t, and even your mentor WLC is aware of that; and I have demonstrated, very plainly, that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise “Whatever begins to exist has a cause”, without demonstrating that the world has a whole requires a cause. In other words, the argument is the Fallacy of Composition, where it is being argued that what is true of a thing’s parts must be true of the whole.

It would be very close if they had a necessary link and they do. It would be nonsense to say everything began to exist without a cause. You only have two choices. My point is drawing the astronomically inferior one not that mine is absolutely certain.

They most certainly do not have a necessary link! And nobody is saying “Everything began to exist without a cause.” It’s only safe to say that we observe things in the universe as having a cause, but beyond that we have no experience. And we do not see things beginning to exist. Time and again when advocates of the Kalam argument are rightly challenged over that first premise, which is specious, they then move on from defending the argument to beg the question of a cause, which is what you’ve done here. We don’t know how the universe came about. What is known, and can be demonstrated, is that the God of classical theism is riddled with logical impossibilities and outright contradictions, which I’ll be pleased to demonstrate with examples.

Sharp? That was a very blunt observation. Nothing hidden or barbed about it. My biggest complain with your side (though you are not by any means it's chief practitioner) are inconsistent standards. Almost every argument against God relies heavily on them and maybe I have become more sensitive to them but there was no personal insult here. Just a point of order. I could grant you every flaw that can be reasonably attributed to my argument and it would still be by far the best current explanation. It would be like trying to destroy any evidence of Mt saint Helens with a sledge hammer. No matter what damage you think you have done or actually done there is still a mountain left.

But it isn’t the best explanation; it’s full of contradictions and just poses further questions that cannot be answered. You offer the Kalam argument, with a confident degree of near certainty, that turns out not to be warranted, while still insisting there is some other supernatural world (God) entirely unlike ours in every possible respect - except that it must share the our world’s contingency in the matter of time and causality. Can you not see how absurd that argument is? I’ll tell you how absurd it is, it either means an infinite regress, which just pushes the cause further back, or it means God must compromise his being in some way.

It was not a debate. If you do not deny that causality is independent of the natural then why do you think the natural's existence has any effect on it.

Eh! I’m saying the statement “Causality is dependent upon the natural” makes no sense, whereas we know that causality and the material world are the same in that they are both contingent. And nor does is make any sense to say “…the natural's existence has any effect on it.” [sic]

What? Nothing in human history is challenged as much as faith. You are claiming faith is immune to being challenged in a challenge to faith. I could make that one up.

Religious faith is challenged, but being a dogma nothing is allowed to count against it, whereas science is a dynamic, constantly being reviewed, up-dated and amended, and it has no particular client group but is open to anyone to dispute a hypothesis with one of their own.

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Great thread!

I have been Reading "In Six days" which adddresses the evolution/creation debate.

Well worth checkin out. Especially the probabilities that "random" processes led 2 the first primitive cells. Most enlightening!

 

[1robin]

I'm disappointed in you. I give you proper arguments and you cannot even do me the courtesy of a proper response. Most of your replies are just retorts, and much of what you say doesn't make any real sense. I can tell that you've just banged off a response saying whatever entered your head, regardless of coherency or its being relative the arguments I've given and the points made. I don't know why you even bothered to reply at all if thats all you can do.

If I can't joke with you then I can't feel secure enough to risk offending you. Regardless I can only disagree. I cannot even see the potential of what your saying. Feel free to not respond if you do not feel like doing so. Suggesting I am just not capable of responding to you only makes me tired. The veneer of atheistic civility is deceptive so often as to be almost a principle. In the end it almost always winds up with the tired old Christians are too ignorant to see how brilliant your argument. Do as you wish.

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Me again ...

If you want some interesting sites - try plugging this phrase from Bill Gates ito your favourite search engine -

Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created

Have a good one!

 

[Warren Clark]

I have seen this argument branded about to somewhat discredit evolution (I am lost as to why persons think this have anything to do with evolution, but that's another story). But I would put it to "creationists" that it is you who are advocating that something indeed came out of nothing. Let's forget the "who created God" question for a while; you (usually) advocate that God created everything..ok.

So here is my question: What did God uses to create the VERY FIRST thing that he created? Wouldn't that FIRST thing had to be created from ....nothing?? For example, if he created dirt first, what did he create that dirt from (since dirt would be the first thing created, there wouldn't be any other "something" around; would there)?

See, your argument that God created everything cannot, in my opinion, work unless you are advocating the "something actually came from nothing."

Playing devil's advocate here I would say that God being all powerful as he is can do whatever he likes. Including creating everything from nothing.
God said let there be light and poof the sun was born out of thin air...

takes a bigger leap of faith if you ask me.

 

[1robin]

Great thread!

I have been Reading "In Six days" which adddresses the evolution/creation debate.

Well worth checkin out. Especially the probabilities that "random" processes led 2 the first primitive cells. Most enlightening!

I believe technically it is one chance in never. Actually I have heard anywhere from 1 X 10^-80th for a cell all the way to just getting a human from a primate being 1 X 10^- trillions^billions. Who knows, but what it is not, is likely.

I might look that video up and I highly recommend Schroeder's "The Science of God". That one is something else.

 

[cottage]

If I can't joke with you then I can't feel secure enough to risk offending you. Regardless I can only disagree. I cannot even see the potential of what your saying. Feel free to not respond if you do not feel like doing so. Suggesting I am just not capable of responding to you only makes me tired. The veneer of atheistic civility is deceptive so often as to be almost a principle. In the end it almost always winds up with the tired old Christians are too ignorant to see how brilliant your argument. Do as you wish.

I’m not offended by jokes or insults, though the latter just lower the tone and get in the way of debate. If you don’t understand something I’ve said then please say so, or ask for clarification. That’s the way debate is supposed to work. Instead, so often your responses have been incredulous, with barely concealed anger or frustration, as if I’m an impudent puppy daring to question the religious orthodoxy. It’s only a bit of sport what we do on here so why not enjoy it?

 

[1robin]

What you’ve written has nothing whatsoever to do with the cosmological arguments. You were trying to convince me that the two cosmological arguments were different in their aims. If you remember you said you were arguing for the Leibizian version. I then explained that they are both causal, and they are! Nowhere in either argument will you find any mechanistic, practical, or doctrinal explanation for an external cause.

Of course not in aims. I think they arrive at the same exact conclusion. They might very well be slightly but meaningful different in methodology. I think they both agree with an assume causation but they both do not make the same use of it. When I see two experts use two different words I draw the likely conclusion the same words were not appropriate. If you find cause and explanation duplicates I can only say I do not. Very similar but in this context with a meaningful difference. Regardless I did not see any problem with either I just found one more robust so this whole discussion is kind of irrelevant.

I must have emphatically and in detailed dozens of times stated the iron clad nature of their premise but pointed out my agreement that the final leap is more than I would have taken. I would agree they result in a God like cause or explanation not my God necessarily. I d just cannot keep repeating that indefinitely. The last step is a little aggressive but very reasonable. The rest is unassailable.

You’ve been trying to tell me that the Kalam argument is unimpeachable. It isn’t, and even your mentor WLC is aware of that; and I have demonstrated, very plainly, that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise “Whatever begins to exist has a cause”, without demonstrating that the world has a whole requires a cause. In other words, the argument is the Fallacy of Composition, where it is being argued that what is true of a thing’s parts must be true of the whole.

Anything is impeachable but a conviction is a whole other matter. We could not convict a confessed perjurer I don't think Kalam is in danger. If your going to resolve to abandon civility an imply mentor relationships without any justification at any time then will fast lose interest. It is not the fallacy of composition it is a logical deduction. I can give you papers written on just why it isn't, it is not even taken as a serious contention.

They most certainly do not have a necessary link! And nobody is saying “Everything began to exist without a cause.” It’s only safe to say that we observe things in the universe as having a cause, but beyond that we have no experience. And we do not see things beginning to exist. Time and again when advocates of the Kalam argument are rightly challenged over that first premise, which is specious, they then move on from defending the argument to beg the question of a cause, which is what you’ve done here. We don’t know how the universe came about. What is known, and can be demonstrated, is that the God of classical theism is riddled with logical impossibilities and outright contradictions, which I’ll be pleased to demonstrate with examples.

That is what you by default must be saying. Everything has a cause but nothing has an ultimate cause. Or at least to suggest they do is somehow out of bounds. We seem to locked in some twilight world where neither side thinks the other comprehends what we say. Actually I think even if true it is a lost cause. I seem to be running out of any clearer way to state things and am left repeating stuff. I suggest you take a break and come back with a new topic. Regardless I have to leave and so must end here for now. If you want I will go back and answer anything I missed.

 

[1robin]

I’m not offended by jokes or insults, though the latter just lower the tone and get in the way of debate. If you don’t understand something I’ve said then please say so, or ask for clarification. That’s the way debate is supposed to work. Instead, so often your responses have been incredulous, with barely concealed anger or frustration, as if I’m an impudent puppy daring to question the religious orthodoxy. It’s only a bit of sport what we do on here so why not enjoy it?

I am the world's foremost expert on my emotional state and your not even close. I do get exasperated every once in a while but you do not have the ability to make me angry over the internet. I have been doing this a long time and my emotions are seldom involved. There is a far greater probability you are just too smart for me than that you make me mad. Light years before I approach anger I start making jokes and maybe you confuse the two. My inability to get mad in the moment has actually been a negative in my past. Things that deserve instant anger do not hit me to long after. I have more regrets at the inability to be mad than the opposite. I have many faults but thin skin is way down the list. Take a break, cool out, maybe invent a new subject and we can try again if you wish.

 

[ArtieE]

I believe technically it is one chance in never. Actually I have heard anywhere from 1 X 10^-80th for a cell all the way to just getting a human from a primate being 1 X 10^- trillions^billions. Who knows, but what it is not, is likely.

Many people have fun with probability calculations. Here are two:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2011/06/15/what-are-chances-you-would-be-born/
The chances of you existing

The second estimates that ten generations ago the chance of you being born was at most 1 in 6000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000. This is your proof that there is such a thing as a designer and creator. Not only that but it shows that this designer/creator must be constantly micromanaging his creation and be personally responsible for the existence of the DNA of every organism that exists or has ever existed.

 

[Thief]

Existing would be first in mind not a creation. Existing comes before being created. No reason to assume the universe was created per se, thats your preference. For all we know existence is a universal supercomputer.

Super computer....as in the supernatural mind of God?