baffman wrote:Frank Apisa wrote:Bring me up to speed, Baffman...and assume I am not the sharpest tool in the shed while doing so.
Are you suggesting that the existence of a God...is more logical (and therefore more likely to be the REALITY) than suggesting that no gods exist?
I'm saying that "The universe had a beginning" makes sense and that, "the universe had no beginning," makes no sense.
Well that may be the problem in our differing takes on this.
"The universe had a beginning" makes less sense to me than "the universe had no beginning."
Quote: Something cannot come from nothing.
That seems more like an argument for my position than yours.
If the universe had a beginning...it would be something coming from nothing. If the universe had NO beginning...that problem would not present itself.
Perhaps my position would be more clear if we changed the wording of your proposition a bit...by substituting the word "existence" for "universe."
Doesn't "existence had a beginning" make less sense to you than "existence had no beginning?"
Quote: Only nothing comes from nothing. Therefore, something comes from something (or someone as I propose). If you propose that God doesn't exist, you are forced to defend a nonsense proposition, "something came from nothing."
But if you presuppose, as you are, that all "things" must come from something (in other words, MUST have a beginning)...you are forced to defend what you consider to be a "nonsense proposition"...something (your god notion) came from nothing. If you are supposing that some things do not have to have a beginning...then we reduce the argument to "Can existence (which includes the universe) be the thing that either a) does not have to have a beginning...or b) that came from nothing...or is a God necessary as an intermediate step?
Either way...your god...or existence...has to be considered as something that either a) had no beginning or b) came from nothing.
Why would it have to be your god? Why would that make more sense? Why would that be "more likely?"
Quote: If you propose that God isn't there, you must either defend belief in a natural universe that has no beginning and no end (which I think is not possible)...
Quote:
But that is so arbitrary. Why?
Quote:; or you must defend a destic universe in which God made it then split (which is possible if you reject the Bible as God's Word and Jesus as God's Son, both of which must be rejected concurrently); or you must defend a theistic universe (which you think or at least Val thinks is meaningless). I think the theistic universe (a personal uncaused cause of the universe) makes far more sense than a "nothing caused" universe.
Trite as this may be...and it is indeed trite...
...If you can conceive of a God without a beginning...an uncaused cause...
...why can you not conceive of existence without a beginning...an uncaused cause?
Keep in mind that I have absolutely no idea of what the REALITY of the situation is. I suspect the TRUTH of REALITY may be so remote from what we are discussing here...that neither the logicalal bits you presume to be presenting or the logical bits others offer in rebuttal...may actaully be logical. In discussing whether or not a God (or gods) are necessary to explain existence and the universe...we may be like ants discussing whether different kinds of grass indicate the existence of a higher order of beingness.
We know so little of what is here...all this speculation about how it came to be is, to be as polite as possible, putting the horse before the cart.