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But what about God? Why is it that the universe needs to be created but God needs no creator? I have a sympathy for an eternal universe because of this issue with what comes first. If the universe is infinite in time then we don't need to care about beginnings. If God is infinite in time then that's a similar kind of completeness.
Also, why does life need God? Do we understand the biology of the primordial soup deeply enough to be totally sure how proteins might form? We have not replicated their formation in the lab, sure, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. How can we be sure that we're not missing some feature of underwater volcanoes that makes it easier to form proteins, or that there isn't some other process that produces life? Does anyone feel really confident about microbiology from billions of years ago?
??? Why so? If we're not using our intellect, then it's just words, superstition and cope (that the evil people who do so well on Earth will actually be invisibly punished by powerful beings after they die, when said beings could easily punish them in public). Scientific logic has gotten us a great many good things, what has critical theory supplied of equal worth? Critical theory is a great solvent, it's used to destroy. But where is the evidence that it dissolves bad things and not good things? I could use critical theory to undermine critical theorists, analyze how they invent new concepts like 'gender' which further divisions and conflict. I could psychoanalyze the interests of critical theorists as a class, open up questions as to the meaning of emancipation...
The universe is composed of parts that change. Everything that changes is composed of the actual (what it currently is) and the potential (all the states it could be in.) Everything that is composite like this needs some sort of explanation for why it is in this current condition and not a different state.
The classical theist definition of God solves this problem by proposing something that has no composition, no change. Because there is nothing else that it could be, its current state needs no explanation. This changeless, fully actual thing is that which we call God. Based on knowing that it is without composition, fully actual, philosophers can then derive proofs for the other common attributes of God.
What if the universe just is, a timeless unchanging thing (unchanging from outside) and time and causality describe relationships within it and it's parts? As an analogy, a filmmaker shoots a reel and the reel itself is unchanging, but within it still seems to move.
To me, this has the advantage of only talking about observable things, and doesn't have the first cause problem. Am I making some elementary error?
That there are real relationships within the universe itself, without which it would be something substantively different, indicates that this is not the answer. Classical Theism requires that God be "divinely simple," composed of no parts that could even be conceptually taken away.
But I will admit we are coming up to the edge of which arguments I remember comfortably. There are lots of distinctions made between types of relationships, causal, change, etc and I have forgotten more here than I remember.
Needless to say, if presented with the box described in the OP, I would open it in a heart beat! I have spent a decent percentage of my life trying to answer the question with the tools I have, and will undoubtedly spend a lot of time in the future on the matter (I have Gaven Kerr's "De Ente et Essentia" on my desk and am trying to psyche myself up for what some have called the best proof for God's existence yet.)
I don't understand this. What's an example of a real relationship that makes the universe substantially different? How does this indicate that "time and causality are not relationships within the universe"?
There could be three fewer stars in the universe, and the universe would still make sense as a concept, but the effects of the gravity of the stars would no longer exist. Within the universe, we can talk about things having cause and effect, firing a bullet really does cause a broken window.
The imagined God would not have such cause and effect internal to it.
Are you saying that the universe could have been different (it could have had 3 fewer stars), therefore it needs an explanation for why it is the way it is, and why it isn't another way? If this is not what you're saying, than I admit I cannot follow what you write.
In this post you discuss God's nature.
Why does God's nature (to act and bring into existence) not require explanation? Couldn't its nature have been different?
I am struggling to see what value or benefit the concept of God is giving: I will admit, my general strategy is to show the universe has God-like properties, or equivalently, that God has universe-like properties.
Yes, you understand what I'm saying. Whether I'm providing the best steelman of the argument is another question (answer is probably no.)
God's nature could not be different, or it would not be God. Philosophers call God a "Necessary Being," a Being whose nature is that it is impossible that it should not exist. If He is the answer to "why something, instead of nothing" it would be because His nature is necessary, not conditional or composite.
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In this analogy, who is watching the universe-movie?
The analogy is between the universe and the film. The film isn't playing, because there's nothing to play it on. Verbs refer to actions within the movie and time refers to the movie's runtime. Are you implying that because movies are filmed in our world, it must mean the universe was created?
No. I mean that the static film reel only appears to move when someone is watching it (and not when it's sitting on a shelf).
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Can this changeless, fully actual thing have downstream causal effects? If not, I don't think "we call this changeless, fully actual thing God, and God is the reason the universe exists" works as an argument for the existence of God-as-the-thing-that-caused-the-universe-to-exist.
If the changeless thing is allowed to causally affect things, the question becomes "but where did the system that contains the changeless thing and also the changeable universe come from, since the changing universe can't be a part of the changeless thing".
The changless thing is allowed to casually affect things, in fact, that is it's nature entirely. The changeless thing's nature is entirely, wholly, and simply to act, to bring into existence. You would need to present a really good argument for why this would imply the universe is part of God. It is contingent on God, and is possibly inevitable based on God's nature, but has a different nature.
Edit: One classical theist described God as an "omnipotence trope," if that helps conceptualize what theists are talking about.
Does the changeless thing that we're calling God know it has acted? Before it acted, did it know that it had not yet acted?
(BTW if your faith is a load-bearing part of your personality, and you're not currently doing anything deeply maladaptive due to that faith, there's probably only downsides and no upsides of engaging)
The changeless thing exists out of time and knows all its actions before, during, and after them. It is without emotion. If that is incompatible with your understanding of the Judeo-Christian God then I don't know why that matters to this conversation.
So, if I'm understanding this view correctly
So, coming from a viewpoint of "for a statement to be meaningful, nontrivial, and correct, its negation must be meaningful and incorrect":
Also, is there any particular reason that we would expect that the universe we live in is one that is causally downstream of an instance of this specific type of god?
I'm going to start referring to the philosopher's God as pGod, to disambiguate and maybe help distinguish the idea in your mind from any religious upbringing you might have had.
I think it can only be discussed analogously, and determined negatively. Meaning, we can be certain of what pGod isn't, and use all those "isn'ts" to develop an "is." It is so far outside our realm of experience as temporal, complex creatures.
When we know something, we are grasping its form and holding the form somewhere inside our self. As the originator and grounds of all forms, pGod grasps these forms in their most perfect way. That is what is meant by pGod knowing everything.
What specific type of god? pGod, the First Cause God? The arguments from casualty, rationality, motion, essence, etc all point to the same type of pGod. They are all arguments for the same God that Is, Existence itself, formulated differently to avoid different objections as they arise, to try to express the idea more clearly.
Or do you mean the omniscient, omnipotent, divinely simple God? The same arguments that make the case for pGod are then continued to require such things. As you can see above, the omniscience follows from the nature of the pGod as the ground of all things, that which is "proved" (philosophically, proof just means a logically coherent argument given certain starting positions) in the argument for pGod.
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Or we could posit that there is an infinite, even if we cannot know it; or even that causality and time make no sense outside of our contingent environment, and that speaking of “what caused the universe” or “what came before the universe” is a category error in and of itself.
Even if we accept that there needs to be an explanation for existence — and any argument for this has been terribly, terribly far from convincing — it doesn’t explain why it needs a god; nor does it explain why a “changeless, fully actual thing” would be able to cause the universe to exist beyond “trust me bro”.
The one thing that I'm fairly certain of is that existence cannot be simply explained by an infinite casual chain. Lets say there was an infinite line of people, each has their hands by their side. They all have the command that when the person to the left of them raises their hands, they will raise their hand. If no one has their hands raised, then no one ever will raise their hands. It doesn't matter if they're standing in a circle. It doesn't matter how many infinities of people there are.
(Edit: This doesn't mean that there can't be a infinite causal chain, just that by itself it doesn't answer the question at hand.)
The question of "why something, instead of nothing?" does not rely on the universe having a beginning. It begins with the attempt to explain the existence of a single thing, here and now, that has the potential to be many other things, and going on from there.
You are trying to imagine a first hand raising but there wouldn't be a first hand, hands would just start raising backwards in time infinitely. These arguments about the impossibility of infinite are weird, we know of logicaly consistent definitions of infinte that are extremely counterintuitive (a segment can be divided by two indefinitely, there are as many even numbers as there are numbers). You can't just say "I can't imagine" and expect to be done with it. Maybe the problem is with the infinite, maybe the problem is your imagination.
I'm not saying "I can't imagine." I said, with the starting position of no contingent things, having an infinite amount of no contingent things does not equal a contingent thing. An infinite series of contingent things that don't exist cannot explain existence. That is what I said, that is what I meant.
Your example relies on a "brute fact:" at least one contingent thing exists. And that is an argument that some philosophers make! It may be true. It is a possible solution. The implications of accepting a "brute fact" haven't been fully unpacked yet but from what I understand it is a possible solution.
I see two possible solutions to the problem of existence: classical theism (at least one non-contingent thing exists) or acceptance of brute facts.
So you are making the argument from contingency not from motion? I don't think it matters much, I still think the dismissal of infinites in these types of arguments lack rigor: they were formulated during a period of time where the principle of non-existence of actual infinity was commonly accepted, but this is not the case anymore. Mathematics rutinely deals with actual infinity in a way that is consistent, so you have to justify why this particular actual infinity is impossible.
It doesn't seem you're responding to what I'm actually saying so I'm not sure what productive conversation can be had here. I'm not arguing from contingency or motion. I'm not even making an argument for God. I did not say a particular actual infinity of contingent things is impossible - in fact I explicitly said it's possible and how ("brute fact")!
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These types of arguments feel totally disengaged from reality. It reminds me of ancient philosophers' endless attempts to define reality using words, and reason about the nature of words and concepts much more than about the nature of reality itself.
External reality exists and is a much more reliable source of information than attempts to reason from first principles.
This is especially true when what we know of reality contradicts these ideas of infinities. You cannot divide a line an infinite number of times. Even a line the length of the entire observable universe can only be divided 205.2 times before reaching 1 Plank Length, beyond which there is simply no smaller unit to divide the line into. Infinities are useful abstractions, but reality operates in discrete units.
This isn't true. You're thinking about Planck time, which is the smallest unit of time that can theoretically be measured.
In any case, that would constrain the lower bound of infinitesimals, but not large infinities; and there are countless other objections. Especially when it's even more true that attempting to reason to god via "something exists" is torturous, and the methods to link it to the Jewish storm god even more so. At least the atheistic abstract arguments in this vein are doing so because they are dealing with that level of abstraction (countering "something exists...therefore god")!
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The argument of @OracleOutlook is (usually) an argument by necessity, "it is logically impossible that god does not exist because..."
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Hm, I'm not sure about that. My understanding of plank lengths is that you can go smaller. There are things smaller than a plank length such as singularities, and there are distances measured using fractional plank lengths (otherwise basic geometry would break).
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If you say so buddy, but from over here this just looks like a completely bespoke definition of "when things need explanations" cut out of whole cloth for no reason other than to let theists off the hook.
The other alternative theory is that some things just are "brute fact", but that this "brute fact" does not have the features of God in classical theism for whatever reason the philosopher favors.
The question, "Why something, instead of nothing?" isn't at all an easy question, and is not solved by an infinite universe. I don't mean to imply God is an easy answer to the question. Just that there is a differentiation being made by classical theists between God and the universe, and that distinction is "change."
I'll be honest, it mostly comes off as word salad. Is there any particular reason to take seriously the idea that being "unchanging" somehow equates to a free pass when it comes to causality, other than the fact that it's convenient for theists?
It just sounds the same as telling me that god has the property of being "fnuh" and that fnuh things don't need to come from anywhere.
Like science has pushed the god of the gaps so far off into irrelevance that the only theistic rhetorical tactic left is to hope they can convince someone that they don't need any evidence outside of their own skulls at all.
To put it very informally, if things that change need explanations for the change then if there is anything that does not need an explanation, it does not change. If there is something that has the property of coming from nothing with no explanation, then it would be something that does not change. You could say that things that change do not always need explanation for that change if you like. I'm not trying to prove or convince anyone of God here. All I am trying to do is explain the distinction between God and the Universe that philosophers draw.
This is not a God of the Gaps argument at all. Thomas Aquinas wrote his Five Ways in the 13th century , Sir Francis Bacon lived in the 17th century.
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