critical thinking made ez

Here is a different angle at the first cause problem. I may be a bit clumsy in explaining it but maybe someone else can help me with it.

I can see or contemplate a purpose for everything that exists; for thoughts, for ideas, even for religion and belief in God, yet I can't find a purpose for a god.

I claim there is/was no purpose for a god to exist. What would the universal nothingness miss without a god? Why did the nothingness need something in it? Since there is matter and energy in this nothingness, why did it need a god to create something that it could do without or why did it create the something itself?

For a god to exist, he must have existed in conflict with nothingness, since nothingness needed nothing to continue in its state of nothingness. Therefore, for a god to exist under those circumstances he must have come from outside the nothingness. But this creates a circle of the same problem with the place that god came from outside the nothingness. My conclusion is that god couldn’t have come into the nothingness from another place and since nothingness didn’t need a god, there is no god.

Of course, we can now apply the same argument to the existence of matter and energy that does exist. It must exist in conflict with the nothingness, and shouldn’t be in existence, unless it has always been here and there has never been a case in which there was an absolute nothingness. To believe this argument, I would also have to believe that god could be in existence for the same reasons that matter and energy exist. Under the argument, god could have also, always existed.

The problem of belief in god comes into play when I examine the purpose of god and the purpose of matter and energy. I see the purpose for energy and matter, I don’t see the purpose of god if indeed energy and matter could have always existed. There is once again, no purpose for a god since energy and matter could have always existed.

Koyaanisqatsi

Not to mention the fact that what you're really talking about here is not a god but an alleged first cause, which cult members just pretend is something called "god."

Even if there were a first cause to the universe, there is absolutely no need for it to be anthropomorphic or any form of being like the fictional creatures certain ancient mythmakers called "god," so we're so incredibly far from any requirement of such a creature that it renders arguments to the contrary ludicrous at best; evidence of deeply delusional minds at worst.

Homo-centric wish fulfillment from frightened men terrified and ego-bruised by their own insignificance=the christian cult. Ta-daa!

Ojuice5001

The answer seems simple to me. His purpose is to do what he wants to do; or, to put it more philosophically, his purpose is to take the values that exist (any value that exists, however great or small) and cause them to be factual states of affairs. I say that is the purpose of all impulsive beings, whether they are humans, warm-blooded animals, gods, or the Supreme God. (Not that the Supreme God necessarily exists--I'm just saying, assuming he does.) Was this question supposed to be hard to answer?

Geebo

Human values dont exist without humans. Maybe god or gods have 'god' values, but they must be different from human ones. Try explaining 'love-hate' to a tree. You cant invent a language without people and a culture (that's why Tolkien wrote Lord of the rings, he was inventing a language and needed something to base it on.).

I just thought, what does someone (god) who is everything, has everything, knows everything etc need with a world anyway when he is already everything.

Isnt the fact that he created the world proof that he isnt omni everything?
How can you have a purpose when you are omni everything?

Metacrock

Meta =>your argument is already marked by the contradiction within its own terms. If there is energy (something) in "nothing" than it isn't nothig. The only important thing about begining with nothing is that that way you don't some prior thing to account for. But if you have energy you don't have nothing you have something and you have to account for it. But, nothingness as a putative state of affiars is impossible in the first place? Why? for the reason we have just seen, because its a contradiction in terms. A Puttaitve state of affiars is something, thus it can't be nothingness.so there has to be somthing that always is and can't come to be or cease to be.


Meta =>Totally wrong! that's just looking at it backassward. You are tending to speak of "nothing" as though it were a bankdraft, a definate concept filled with nothingness which is constructed in terms of "something." You can't have a situation in which God is competing with "nothing" because if there is something existing than you don't have a state of true nothingness. Nothing is not an entity in its own right, it can only exist if nothing else exists at all. Of course if that were the case than nothing could ever come to be. So there has to be a some kind of eternal something and you can't have God competing witih nothingness.

Look say that God exists. Now it's not God alonside nothing, it's God! There is no nothingness because something exists, see?

Meta =>Unless of course you stop speaking of "nothing" as though it were an entity in its own right, which by defition it cannot be.


Meta =>Of course you are just repeating the same mistake.

Meta =>There is no "purpose" for matter and energy. IN a strict materailist view there is no purpose for existence it just is. Why can't God be the same way?

More importantly, Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it ant there. Now let's think for a sec about the term "purpose." Usually this term describes some design or idea some intintinal notion which a thinking mind has decided upon. For God to have a puropse he would have to be product of a larger God who determined to create him. This is a violation of Occam's razor, there's no need to multiply entities beyond the necessity impossed by one final cause. Thus we can see why they call it final cause because it is the place where all things such as a causes and purposes stop. It's the end of the line, which means, it's an end in itself.

IN a Christian sense the basic intention of God is love. That descirbes God's basic charactor and motivations. Love is "the will to the good of the other" or perhaps we could say a tendency to give of the self to the good of the other. Being is in the abstarct a giving proposition, its purpose it simpley to do what it does, to be. In being it gives of itself to the existence of the beings. So as we understand God as Being itself we can see that the basic motivational force in all of reality is this charactoristic or tendency of God to give through act of existing and to give in such a way as to be productive of the beings as they partake of the act of being.

In other words, God doesn't need some chain of infinite regress marking purposes for his existence, he just is and his basic tendency is to bestow being upon beings.

Metacrock

Meta =>Is that the thinking of the atheist religion hater's cult? You are without a doubt the most ignorant person I've ever seen.

Metacrock

Meta =>Why would he want a world when he's everything? See my comments in my first post about the relation between God =Being = love and giving or bestowing of being.

That's like saying "why would Being want to produce more being when it already is being?" Cause that's what it does, that's why it is being.

hezekiah jones

Why - because he terrified you, or bruised your ego?

copernicus

Good point, but the question is just as easily reversed. If there is no "purpose" to God, then why can't matter and energy be the same way? Why is the universe itself not the final "cause"?

Too true. And, just because you think it's there, doesn't mean it is there. You have to have some reasonable evidence to posit something that you can't sense. Scientific theories often posit the existence of objects and events that we can't observe, but theories are deduced from the behavior of things that we can see. God isn't. Occam's Razor applies.

Precisely. For the universe to have a purpose, it would have to be the product of a god. This is a violation of Occam's Razor. There is no need to multiply entities beyond the necessity imposed by one final cause--the universe itself.

You are clearly struggling with this one. God's "tendency" really sounds like a "purpose" to me. You are saying the God's purpose is to bestow "being upon beings", even though it could just be that the universe has that "tendency". Maybe it really is "turtles all the way down". As long as you are violating Occam's Razor, why not have some fun? Posit a whole passle of gods, each one creating the next. Then you could have the grand "First God", who gave being to the second one. The purpose of all the gods but one was to create the next one. The last one's purpose was to create the universe, but the first one just had a "tendency" to create the second one. Not a purpose.

Remember this meta: the First Cause has a purpose. It's purpose is to explain or account for the Second Cause. The problem is that, in your account, we can only perceive things caused by the Second Cause. Is the Big Bang the First Cause or the Second Cause? You solve nothing by claiming it is the Second Cause.

[ February 10, 2002: Message edited by: copernicus ]</p>

critical thinking made ez

Well Meta, you and I pretty much agree there was never a time of nothingness and it appears we agree that God or matter and energy have always or could have always existed.

Since Purpose is eliminated from our argument we can use Occam's razor to eliminate God from the choices since God has a purpose whereas matter and energy do not.


edited for clarity.

[ February 10, 2002: Message edited by: critical thinking made ez ]</p>