I'm not saying that there are definitely no other explanations other than God, I'm only saying that suggesting Aliens or any other being as a cause, you are merely substituting one God for another.

If what we call the "universe" was part of a cell of a greater being, then you've only expanded the universe to include that being, but have not answered the question of origins.

And my point is that it wouldn't necessarily be a god with any of characteristics you associate with gods, it would just be a being that can create universes. 'Can create universes' and 'god' are not synonymous.

How is it that you get so easily from 'created the universe' to 'god'? It's almost as if you're looking for a god and that fits, rather than starting at the universe existing and then trying to figure out how that happened.

Well, you're right in that the being doesn't need to share the same characteristics we associate with what we call "God", but in the scope of this discussion, we mean God to be precisely that, a being that put the universe in existence. That's what was being argued I thought, that the universe had some cause other than someone creating it wilfully. We don't have to call him God, we can call him the guy that created the universe, but the point is that "that guy" exists and is the cause, and it's irrelevant if he is an "alien", or a "monster", or a "god", because it all means the same thing, that the cause was an entity greater than us.

I don't understand how this argument implies a 'willfull being' created the universe. The only requirement is that the process be non-contingent. Imagine that there exists a non-contingent field by which universes can and do arise. This field would then be 'God' by this argument even though it did not have any willfull action associated with it. It may be timeless and infinite. Many areas of physics do not imply existence of time and some physicists even think time is an illusion (although this is not mainstream thought). Suppose such a timeless, spaceless field existed and from it arose universes or other unknown items. This would not need to be intelligent, or willfull, or a being.

I'm not implying that this field exists, but am trying to show that the fact that something exists does not mean that it has a 'creator being'.

WLC throws in God because he knows it is a loaded term. He should use the proper, specific term for whatever he is describing in his argument.

I was never trying to argue that the cause must be God, I said from the start that there could be other explanations to the universe. My one and only point was that suggesting the cause does not have to be "God" and then pointing to another being instead, does nothing but shift the cause from one powerful being to another.

Suggesting a non-contigent field, while problematic as a theory I think, is a fine suggestion and a perfectly valid alternative to God within the realm of this discussion.

I'm not sure if I didn't explain myself properly, but I never suggested that God must be the cause.

I like In the tank's answer to this, I was going to say something along those lines but probably wouldn't have done as good a job.

You can call it 'god' if you want, but that in no way means that whatever the cause was, it's something like what you associate with the word.

He throws God in because in the fuller KCA he explains the difference between the personal and the impersonal.

Edit: BTW, projecting an absolute, impersonal reality-creating field is just moving the universe problem back, not solving it.

You still have the other problem with the argument, which is actually the bigger problem.

And yet this problem doesn't seem to apply to God...

LDO. God just exists because he exists. He didn't have to be created because, ummm, hmmm. Darn it.

How so? The field would be non-contingent (just like he asserts God would be) and would be creating a contingent universe.

This of course assumes that the universe is even contingent in the first place, and it might not be, since we do not have any understanding of the state of the universe prior to the big bang, or even space/time existed in the first place. Or, is there a time before the big bang? If time is only an emergent property of our universe, or if its existence is isolated to the confines of our universe, then it could be the case that the universe itself is non-contingent.

I'm not sure what's happening here, if I'm not understanding you guys well or vice versa, but my first comment was to the guy that suggested that the flying spaghetti monster may have created the universe, and I was only saying that it's just another powerful being that is being substituted for God, which doesn't actually solve anything with regards to this discussion. His point was that there are other possible causes of origin, something I never argued, but only that some of his explanations were actually closer to what he was trying to avoid.

I never tried to argue that God must be the cause of the Universe, I'm not sure why that keeps being the focus when it's not at all what I was arguing.

Sometimes conversations don't go the way you want them to.

The cosmological argument is
an attempt to prove that god actually exists. It fails on multiple grounds (despite only needing to fail on one) and people are just talking about the failing they like best.

I disputed a point and you disagreed with me, but you argued something completely different, it's just confusing is all, you can talk about that if you want, feel free.

It isn't completely different. It is the same topic. It is a huge problem since the entire argument exists in an attempt to prove that a creator god must exist, not to prove that a creator god or creator rice crispy treat exists.

To speak to your most recent comment on the actual argument, specifying any non-contingent thing is equally as problematic as specifying that the universe is non-contingent. All that the argument does is push the problem back a step without solving it.

(you are also confusing me with Boosh, and I'm sure that this also adds some confusion. Frankly it adds some horror. I'm sure that Boosh would agree)

It’s not at proof level, but I do think it’s plausible. Here’s a cleaner version of the core argument from Mortimer Adler:

http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/...t-idea-of-god/
Let me repeat the argument again for you now. If the existence of an effect implies the existence of its required cause and if contingent things exist and if everything contingent must be caused to exist and if no contingent thing can ever cause the existence of another contingent thing, then it follows that a necessary being exists as the cause of the existence of the contingent things known by us to exist.

He then comments:

Now I think that some people are better able to understand these matters than I am. And for people who can understand them better than I, think it is fair to say that they in their understanding really understand and know the truth about God’s existence. I would go so far as to say that even for persons like myself with a weaker understanding of the truth of these propositions, I have some rational grounds for a certain that God exists even though I have to make a leap, a leap beyond those rational grounds to a belief. My reason carries me just so far being weak. My understanding doesn’t carry me the whole way yet. My understanding and reason carry me far enough so that I’m entitled as a rational man, as a reasonable man am entitled to make a leap beyond reason to the belief that God exists. And when I make this leap, I think I make it not to a belief in the God of the philosophers but I think the God I believe to exist is the God that is worshipped by the religions of the West. As Pascal says and other philosophers, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

So I think there’s some straw-manning going on when the argument is purported to be an uncontroversial proof of God's existence, where one is unconditionally compelled to accept every premise. I mean, how many philosophical arguments are you aware of that are without dissenters or controversy?

Q. Why is there not naught?
A.1. Because something exists.
A.2. Because something exists whose very nature is to exist, so that its existence follows immediately from its nature or essence.

A.1. is not an explanatory answer because it doesn’t tell us “why” something exists, just that something does. Whereas A.2. is explanatory because it does tell us “why” there is not naught. That’s what a necessary being is, a being whose nature or essence is such that it cannot fail to be, as opposed to a contingent being who may or may not exist since there is nothing about it which necessitates its existence. From which, since the existence of a contingent being doesn’t follow from its essence, then something outside of it must cause its existence, at every moment of its existence. In other words, if there is at least one contingent being, then we need a non-contingent being, which cannot in principle fail to be, to ‘explain’ the continual existence of said contingent being. That doesn’t mean that the universe can’t just perpetually exist; just that if that’s the case we’re proffering an observation, not an explanation.

At any rate, I just don’t see any way we can call a necessary being “natural,” without dramatically expanding the scope of what the term currently means. I guess that leaves the door open for some yet to be conceived version of supra-naturalism, but we’d still need to say that there is some principal whereby it couldn’t fail to be, a criteria even pantheism can't meet.

Even the very very silly atheists can note that it is plausible. Everything is plausible.

The cosmological proof is supposed to be a proof for god existing, not a plausible thingamajig.

And yet your language seems to point to that being your default position. I'm starting at 'what created the universe' and including god as one possibility, you seem to start at 'god created the universe' but are prepared to consider other possibilities.

For the record no it doesn't. Clearly I have a higher opinion of you than you do of me.

As I mentioned earlier. The strength of the argument proposed by OP is proportional to the vagueness by which we define 'God'. The more vaguely we define 'God' the stronger the argument. The more specifically we begin to define 'God' the weaker the argument becomes.

Accordingly, 'God' in this argument is an ill-defined concept. When you use ill-defined concepts to build an argument, you can sway the hippies and the teenagers, but for empiricists and pragmatists, we see little utility in semantic masturbation.

I don't understand the following:

1) " if no contingent thing can ever cause the existence of another contingent thing"

Why not? Can't the second contingent thing be contingent on the first?

2) "And when I make this leap, I think I make it not to a belief in the God of the philosophers but I think the God I believe to exist is the God that is worshipped by the religions of the West"

Is there some justification for this leap that I'm missing or is it just his personal preference and unsupported by the previous logic?

I'm not sure that I understand this either but I'm wondering if we're talking at cross purposes. I can't give you the explanation for the universe, but that doesn't mean that I don't think that there is an explanation. It may be that the universe is necessary and that we can't actually know that there was 'nothing' before it, and even if there was, it may have been a nothing from which the universe necessarily sprang into existence. But where do we need a god in all that?

Right, I get that. The 'intellectual' part was not really my point, and I should have left it broader: simply that the origins of everything is beyond our reach, so it has no place in any proof one way or the other. Where you say "currently inaccessible", I might suggest "inaccessible by its very nature".

(Yes, it's clearly an argument from ignorance, but it's one I think is also obviously the case!)

It's a bit of a mood killer, I suppose. But I just find it funny when a philosopher makes these sure-sounding positions and exclamations about stuff like cause, and contingency, and necessity, regarding a phenomenon we know almost nothing about, but some of the things we would say are that the known laws of physics wouldn't remotely apply.

Yeah I kinda understand your point. The reason I said currently inaccessible is that I leave open the possibility that we determine some mechanism to bring these questions within our reach, not only with regard to the technology but adaptations to the paradigm that allow the scientific method address questions that would currently be out side it's scope. Many worlds being one of those.

I agree that neither side should be talking of proof but they can talk and the models are still interesting I think

The argument is predicated on the Principal of Sufficient Reason, which states that no effect is without its requisite cause. The effect in question isn’t a coming into existence, but rather a continuing to be or continual existence. Likewise, the requisite cause is a continual cause of existence, not a cause of becoming. The example Adler uses is one of parents and a child, whereby the parents are the cause of the child’s coming to be, but not of its continuing to be. For the latter a continual cause of existence is needed, which can’t come from the child lest he’s a necessary being. If that’s wrong and we have a chain of contingent beings, then contingent beings lack an explanation for their continued existence, and that’s that, turtles all the way down.

I think the AfC is a rationally acceptable argument with a conclusion consistent with the God of revealed religion. Obviously, the God of Abraham is thought of as more and as doing more than a necessary being who merely exists. So there’s a leap from one to the other, but it’s not a leap wholly without reason since God is of the class of necessary being. Maybe we can bridge it a little by arguing that just as we can only have one genuine “first cause” we can only have one genuine necessary being, or try to deduce some attributes of a necessary being consistent with God, but there’s still a leap.

The universe is the totality of contingent beings, so it’s not a candidate for necessary being. Again, that doesn’t preclude the universe from just existing, as contingent beings all the way down or a loop of them, but that doesn’t suffice for an explanation. If either is the case, then the universe exists as a brute fact, inherently lacking an explanation for its existence.

As NotReady said earlier, (my bold):