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slickwombat t1_j55v6to wrote

Reply to comment by AGuyOnYT in /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 16, 2023 by BernardJOrtcutt

>As I said, I believe the answer to my question is God, but if you disagree, please explain your thoughts and let me know of any errors I may have made.

The problem is that you've just posed questions and then said "God is the answer." But to convince the atheist, you'd have to establish how God exclusively, or in a uniquely satisfactory way, answers these questions. They clearly don't already agree, and do have potential answers. For example, they can just say "I don't know why anything exists, but none of the arguments for God as an explanation succeed." Or perhaps they might say the existence of anything at all is a brute fact, i.e., a contingent fact which neither has nor possibly could have an explanation.

>This is also a question for atheists too. As you see God defined above as the “First Mover” and creator of the universe, why do you not believe in God’s existence? Why is God not logically valid as a term for the producer of existence?

Atheists disagree because they don't think there is a first mover/creator, or at least that it has the various properties God is supposed to have (e.g., personhood and consciousness, omnipotence and omniscience).

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AGuyOnYT t1_j56fukh wrote

I think the issue here is our interpretations of "God". I don't claim to know the nature of God beyond him (default pronoun for simplicity) being responsible for existence rather than nonexistence. I'm not saying God is what Christians believe him to be or what Muslims claim etc. The supposed properties you mention are undecided for me. It's not like I imagine God to be a gray-haired man in the sky with infinite wisdom. I believe all theists agree on that foundation - God is just what we call the ultimate creator. He didn't create in the sense that a conscious effort involving rationality and purpose (very human-like) was made. The universe we inhabit we truly know very little about, I wouldn’t claim the source of its entirety to be just like us necessarily.
But you must agree that there is indeed something rather than nothing. At some point after questioning the causes for everything sequentially (parents meet, grandparents meet, big bang, etc.) , you must reach something that has always been there. “Something” could never come from “Nothing” or it wouldn't be “Nothing”.
That something is what I call God. Unless you don't agree with my definition for God, I truly don't see how anyone can deny God.

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Placeboresistant t1_j5bf0vi wrote

Identifying as an atheist doesn’t mean you deny any possible definition of “God”, it’s referring to a specific definition or group of definitions that need to be agreed upon before any real conversation can happen.

Your argument would make perfect sense to anyone that agrees with your definition of “God” and also doesn’t believe in him. How large do you think that group is?

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AGuyOnYT t1_j5bho0y wrote

You bring up a good point. I could claim to be atheist, agnostic, or theist depending on what I consider God to be.

There doesn't seem to be a universal definition for God that I could find (some internet searching), which is indeed a problem when it comes to communicating our beliefs on the existence or nature of God with everyone.

Word play aside, I think we can all agree that there is a something that's always existed. Ourselves, what we see around us, etc. couldn't have come from nothing or it wouldn't really be nothing.

Curious what definition you base your atheism on (I presume you are)?

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el_miguel42 t1_j5bud94 wrote

I dont agree that "something" must have always existed, I also dont agree that everything couldn't have come from nothing. I just came across this and I dont know the first thing about philosophy. Im a physicist.

Time is a function of our universe. That is to say that time is not linear. It does not pass at a constant rate. It appears to for us as humans. However, we know that time infact changes depending on relative speed. This is a known fact (time dilation, special relativity)

There are objects inside our own universe where the fundamental rules of the universe (time, matter, 3 spatial dimensions etc etc) seem to break down e.g a black hole.

Why is this relevant? Its because you are applying the ruleset of our universe - time, causality, matter, energy etc to a scenario outside of our universe. Essentially, your entire premise requires this assumption to work.

So you say "What happens before the big bang? There must be something? There must be a cause? We cant come from nothing" - Why? All those are rules OF our universe. It is a assumption to assume that any of that ruleset would exist outside of our universe. If there is no time, what do the words before, after, begin and end even mean anyway?

So thus God cannot be the logical outcome. If you need to make a string of assumptions in order to reach your logical conclusion... then its probably not a logical conclusion.

EDIT: your point on freewill in of itself is an entire assumption. You have no idea whether brownian motion or quantum phenomena are truly random, or whether the same answer would repeat if you were to go back in time and observe the event again. Using the current model for quantum theory if you went back in time and observed a quantum event again, it could change. However, there is no way to know as it cannot be tested.

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AGuyOnYT t1_j5c24lm wrote

God as far as I and many religions are concerned exists outside of time.

The idea of things coming about involves time. For there to be nothing and then something implies time as well. So for there to be no change, there are two possibilities:

  1. There was/is/will be nothing
  2. There was is/will be something

We can cross out number 1 as we know there is indeed something right now. So no change means there always was something.

But let's suppose there was nothing but that changed and something came about as you say. Now, because time is involved as a change occurred, I can pose the question, "where did that something come from?" A true nothingness, and I mean absolutely nothing, cannot spawn something or else it would be the "thing that caused something" and would be something itself.

With regards to free will, the "rewind" thing was a very small part of my argument. If random phenomena dictate our reality, then I think there's an even better case against free will - more outside of our control. If it would rewind the same (not random), my argument stands exactly the same.

Speaking of time, I've been spending a lot of time in this sub and have enjoyed these discussions, but I gotta take a break for the day at least haha

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kataraks t1_j5c7v0y wrote

if i understand things correctly, the idea that "true nothingness cannot spawn something" isn't necessarily true outside the universe as that's a rule of the universe. thus invalidating the premise of "where did that something come from" (the premise being that it must've come from something) and everything that follows

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AGuyOnYT t1_j5c9q4i wrote

It's not really a rule, it's just logic. I don't know how else I can phrase it. Do you also think that 2 + 3 can equal 4 outside the universe?

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kataraks t1_j5cak0s wrote

whatever it is, it's "of the universe"

2 + 3 could equal 4 outside the universe. idk. i doubt those numbers, as we understand them, exist outside the universe at all

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el_miguel42 t1_j5ccrd2 wrote

you've just hit the nail on the head. 2+3 can absolutely equal 4 outside the universe. *Obviously we have defined the axioms that make this work so if our definitions hold then no, but barring semantics and all that rubbish aside, thats the exact point.

You have no idea what 2+3 equals outside our universe because we come up with all these logic rules through observation. Macro level observation at that, the quantum world works completely differently. There you can get very strange results like 2=4=5 for fractions of a second, before it then becomes 2+3=5.

So no, logic is defined on the actions of the observable universe and are thus an assumption you are applying to outside of the universe. You have no idea of the ruleset outside the universe, so you cannot apply any "logic" to it.

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AGuyOnYT t1_j5ceqsd wrote

What do you think exists outside of the observable universe?

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el_miguel42 t1_j5edij5 wrote

I dont...

Whatever I could think up would be wrong, hence its an exercise in futility. if I postulate that there is a fluffy land with unicorns running around in it, thats just as likely to be correct as some old father-like dude watching us from his seat in some mythical kingdom, nothingness, some weird 9-dimensional spacetime etc etc. Its all just arbitrary guesswork with no frame of reference. So you can make up whatever story you like and be content that its just as likely as whatever other story you've heard.

Maybe the Christian God did it, but then again, maybe I made it all. And seeing as how you're actually talking to me right now, then im probably more likely to have made the universe than the Christian God, because at least you have evidence that I exist.

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Placeboresistant t1_j5bm14o wrote

I don’t disagree that “something” preceded existence as we understand it, although I wonder what the implications of that are? I guess I’m more agnostic about anything that by definition can’t be comprehended.

I generally base my atheism as opposed to religious theism. If I were to roughly boil it down I’d say I don’t believe in any omnipotent entity that passes judgement on our existence.

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