Not so... if you're picking from among a list of objects, you sometimes pick one over the others based not on the merits of that one, but by the demerits of the others. This is often called the process of elimination.

This doesn't seem right to me. Take a commonplace observation, such as "This picture fell over." You don't need to prove a cause to recognize that this is an effect of something. Maybe someone bumped the table, maybe the stand broke, maybe there was an earthquake, or maybe all the atoms in the picture were randomly moving in the same direction. Regardless, it seems unreasonable to claim that because we do not know the cause that we cannot say that this was an effect of *something*.

Yes, that's precisely what I'm claiming... Maybe I'm not understanding your objection. Are you saying that by calling the Big Bang a "change of state" (whatever this really means), you're invoking a "natural explanation"? Under this conception of "natural explanation", how would you ever know what is or is not a "natural explanation"?

How could you say that the "first cause" is natural if it doesn't have to abide by any particular rules?

The universe could be eternal, but it doesn't seem to be the case that this is so. And again, what makes an explanation "natural"?

Although this will be a long, winding conversation, it seems relevant here for you to explain your sense of "knowing." Are you saying that "knowing" such things are impossible? If so, then what can we know and how do you know what the limits of knowing are? Or if you're saying that we can know, but we don't yet know, how will you know when you know?

The reason I think this is relevant is because your comment gives me the impression that you're doing some epistemological gymnastics in order to avoid a knowledge claim, but that the particular moves you're making here are unique to this circumstance.

You're slightly misreading what is written. I can accept that creature-words and creature-thoughts are not adequate for describing God. But given that creature-words and creature-thoughts are the only types of words and thoughts that I can produce, there is no choice BUT to use these things to attempt to describe God. So it's not as though the Bible "gets a pass" but rather it is understood that the words therein must be handled with the utmost of care in order to create an understanding of God as accurately as it is possible for us to do.

Now you're creating a category called "something" which is actually the category "everything." If not, then you must provide me of at least one example of a potential "non-something" to show me that this category could, in fact, be a non-trivial description.

Also, notice that you are creating a subclass of "somethings" called "somethings we know." You now want to apply some sort of inductive argument. But the induction fails because it once again creates the infinite spiral that leads to nonsense.

You're making a claim of not-knowing similar to Deorum's. What is your standard of knowing, and why can't these things be known?

I'm not sure if "physically outside" is appropriate, given that everything that is "physical" is inside. But in the sense of an analogy, it works as long as you don't push it too hard.

Is the Bible 100% accurate in its usage of words to describe God?

I was using something right form my first post under the assumption God is a something instead of nothing. If Gods not something im ok with that as it fits under things my brain cant comprehend.

On a side note arguing Gods not a something kind of hurts Yahweh as he was something on more then one occasion.



But lets just get rid of the something altogether because it really comes down to this.


The theist position is everything that exists needs a creator. (if not then the universe doesn't necessarily need a creator)

The universe exists so it needs a creator.

God exists so it needs a creator. (if not you will have to show me why not and why God doesn't need a creator but the universe does)


And asserting God doesn't need a creator because he's outside of the universe and that's the way things work outside of the universe doesn't work. That's just a God and things outside the universe work in mysterious ways argument with no proof or knowledge of how God or things outside of the universe work.

Now your right i cant say for sure God needs a creator but both positions come down to unprovable assumptions and afaik one or the other could be true or both could be wrong as i just don't have enough knowledge about this universe or what, if anything, exists outside of it.

In other words im not trying to prove God does or doesn't need a creator as i just don't know and im making a guess. The guess is based on the assumption God exists, based on the assumption everything that exists needs a creator, based on limited and flawed knowledge of God,this universe and whats outside it and how both work. But anyone who says God doesn't need a creator is just guessing too.

I don't know if these things can be known i just know i don't know. My standard for not knowing how the universe got here or if it always was here is based on ignorance.

If you want to prove to me there are no other options or the best option is the universe has a creator and that creator always existed outside of our universe im all ears. First you will have to tell me how infinity and exist can even occur outside of our universe and time because those always trip me up when it comes to God. Until then my best guess is this universe was created by a scientist in another universe after his mog knocked over some test tubes and that scientists universe was created in much the same way in an infinite regress of mog creation.

If you believe that God had a creator, that creator doesn't have to necessarily still exist.

What if the way He was created was like an outcome of an Othello game where white took over the whole board?

I think the main point in demanding a creator for the creator is that that way the God camp has not broken the infinite regress.
Now you need a creator for the creator of the creator, and so on; its turtles all the way down.

Ive never understood why infinite regress is any less plausible the eternal existence. Both seem incomprehensible.

God blew himself up for the universal lols obv.

Process of elimination only works for justification when you can demonstrate both that you have an exhaustive list and that all of the other options are false. It is not sufficient justification to make a list of all of the options of which you can think and then picking which makes more sense to you.

I did not write that knowing what the cause was was necessary, just knowing that there was a cause is sufficient. We know that the picture fell over due to some cause because we have a mountain of evidence that pictures falling over always have causes and no evidence that they fall over without them. Calling something an effect is necessarily implying that there is a cause. We do not have any such evidence about the creation of universes needing causes, nor whether or not it was created or 'began' in the first place. And even if we did, that would not automatically imply that that cause had to be a god.

My objection is that a natural explanation is not confined to 'something within our universe.' I am not invoking a natural explanation, as I do not claim to know what the explanation is. But it is certainly possible. What I mean by natural explanation is something that happened without some sort of 'intelligent guidance' - something that happened as a result of natural forces. By change of state I mean changing from one form to another (perhaps the singularity was eternal, for instance). In order to know what is a natural explanation, one would have to be able to show that what occurred (such as the creation of the universe) was a result of natural forces (such as physics).

I did not write that it did not have to abide by any rules. I do not know whether or not it did. But perhaps the rules that govern our universe are not entirely 'internal.' Perhaps they exist outside of our universe as well. Or perhaps there are other rules outside of the universe that are suspended inside of it. Or perhaps there are not. Maybe it did not have to abide by any rules. I am not making a positive claim about a 'first cause.' I am asking for justification about yours.

Why not?

I do not know whether or not knowing such things are impossible. I do not know what the limits are. I am not avoiding making a positive claim for the sake of ignoring something. I am refraining because I cannot justify the claim either way. We will know the answer when we can justify it; we will know when it is demonstrable. I have nothing against believing that the universe was created by some intelligence if it can be reasonably justified. This is what I am asking of those who make the positive claim 'the universe was created by X' - I am asking for justification. I am asking them to demonstrate that claim, but I have never received any justification. When I ask that question, all I get are personal anecdotes and logical fallacies.

Why cannot there by anything physical outside of the universe?

Let's take a look at the claims:

1) Every effect must have a cause that is sufficient for the effect
2) Everything in the (physical) universe is caused by something.

So the alternatives are

1') There are some effects whose cause is insufficient for the effect
2') There are things in the (physical) universe that are not caused by anything.

Since we're looking at statements of the form "P" and "not P", I think process of elimination is entirely sufficient for these types of statements.

This is equivalent to statement 2 above.

How do you know when something involved "intelligent guidance' or not? What indicators do you have that would tell you that such guidance happened? (By the way, this is the heart of one of the criticisms of intelligent design, that design cannot actually be measured.)

The best scientific evidence points to a beginning of the universe. If you think there's a lot of validity in their methods, then if you want to argue for an 'eternal' universe, you'll need to argue with the cosmologists.

What is the necessary level of justification in order for it to be "justified" to you? In other words, what would it take for one to "reasonably justify" that the universe was created by some intelligence?

You would have to tell me what "physical" means in a way that contrasts it with "non-physical" and still have meaning both "inside" and "outside" the universe.

Okay, I am with you so far. So we have an exhaustive list. Now we have to go about showing which ones are incorrect in order to use the process of elimination. 'This one makes more sense to me' does not satisfy that burden. You must necessarily demonstrate that it is false in order to rule it out.

I do not know exactly how one would go about it, but that is not my responsibility. Demonstrating that something was or was not guided is the responsibility of the person claiming that it was or was not. The reason the burden of proof is on these people is because in order to reasonably make a positive claim they are presumably the people who have access to the evidence in the first place in order to make the claim. I am not making a claim either way, and demonstrating that the universe was designed would be a daunting task. I am simply asking for that evidence in order to justify my belief. Before I have such evidence, I will not believe.

If you mean the Big Bang, then this is false. The Big Bang is a description of what happened at the point that the singularity began to expand until now. It makes no claim about what the singularity was 'before' this expansion, whether or not this singularity was 'created' out of nothing (or something else for that matter), or whether or not 'before the expansion' even makes sense.

The necessary level of justification is that at which I could reasonably conclude that it is more likely that the universe was 'designed' than it was not. It would either take one extraordinary piece of evidence, such as the creator revealing himself to me, or a bunch of smaller ones, such as demonstrations that somethings which do exist in our universe could not have happened through a natural process.

It means the same thing. For instance, why cannot our universe be some sort of bubble inside of a larger universe? And that reality works the same way in both?

I'm not going to "prove" that they are false, because to do so would require another set of assumptions for which you can play the same game. No formal logical system can move forward without statements that you accept to be true without (formal) justification (for example, the law of the excluded middle, or even the rules of logical inference). But here are my objections to the alternatives.

If the cause is insufficient for the effect, then it seems that "describing" an effect becomes nonsensical. It would require one to accept statements such as "X and Y caused Z to happen even though X and Y aren't enough to cause Z to happen." This I find to be incoherent.

The cause-effect pattern is very much ingrained to our patterns of thought that I do not think there's a coherent way of understanding interactions in the universe without the cause-effect paradigm. Such events could be out there, but there's not enough merit in the possibility to accept 2' over 2.

In other words, since there are no goalposts, it's impossible for anyone to score a goal.

Modern cosmology has determined the age of the universe to be finite. If you disagree, your argument is not with me. But I think the underlying issue (which is related to your questions regarding "outside the universe") is that you're equivocating on your notion of "universe."

Again, this is a question of whether the goalposts even exist. How could one demonstrate that something could not have happened through a "natural process" unless one can completely determine all possible results of all possible "natural processes"? In other words, how can one ever convince you that there's not some "yet undiscovered" natural process?

I am not playing a game, it is not as complicated as you are making it out to be. You just need to start with a set of assumptions that are demonstrable. We do not have to go all the way back to the beginning with logical absolutes. Premises which are demonstrably true are sufficient.

I agree with this with the caveat that we are, of course, only talking about something that has a cause. If the effect is the result of the cause, then yes the cause must be enough to cause the effect (tautological I am sure you will agree).

Well, we do know of things which happen without a cause in our universe. But remember, we are not talking about things in our universe, we are talking about the universe itself. Now, I am not taking the position that the universe did happen without a cause. The position I am taking is that simply because cause-effect is real in our universe does not mean it has to be applicable to the creation of our universe. We cannot say anything about the laws governing things outside of our universe because our experience is exclusively within it. My position is that we cannot claim 2 over 2' works outside of the universe simply because it works inside of it, and even if we could this does not bring us any closer to understanding what that cause is.

Maybe. But that does not justify picking whichever you want. If there is no way to demonstrate it, then it will remain unknown. If there is a way to demonstrate it, I would like to hear it. I am not the one making the claim.

Again, are you talking about the Big Bang or something else? If it is the Big Bang, then the theory says nothing about 'before this point there was nothing' or 'everything just poofed into existence at this point.' It describes a singularity at the point of expansion until now. The timeframe of that expansion is finite. That does not imply that the singularity itself (or in some other form) is finite. And even if it did, you would still have the problem of demonstrating that that cause was a god and not something else. If you are talking about something other than the Big Bang Theory, I would be interested in reading about it.

I do not know, you are the one making the claim that you can!

"Demonstrably true"? If you've "demonstrated" it, then it's a "conclusion" and not an "assumption" because it lays at the *end* of some inferential chain of reasoning and not the beginning of it.

This isn't true. Modern cosmology doesn't even know for certain what the universe even is. Different cosmologists could have radically different views and both will admit that the other might be closer to correct. So you can't blame him for equivocating on the notion of the universe when the authorities you are claiming (modern cosmologists) do the same thing.

So all the times that I've told that the universe is 14 billion years old, what universe are they talking about?

The monster is in the closet and you disagree because you can't look, and the final conclusive proof is the impossibiliy of disproving my argument.

Rarely has "worse than wrong" fit better.

Our local big bang bubble. Many theories include other parts of the universe outside of this including coleman de Luccia instantons and eternal inflation scenarios. These are very much a part of modern cosmology.

A sanity check before I start reading, please. It looks like the following paper is a non-technical overview of the subject. Can you quickly skim it (or at least see if the author's name is familiar) and give it a thumbs up/down before I start to try to digest it?

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../0101507v1.pdf

Alan Guth is one of the leaders in these subjects, so I think it would be worth reading.