Comments on: Tract #19: Does God Exist?

By: ideclare

ideclare — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:38:31 +0000

I’m not saying that God cannot be timeless or exist without time. I’m saying that if God created time, the cause of time (God’s action) could not have preceded the effect (the creation of time).

By: Christina

Christina — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:47:06 +0000

So if God created time, then he could not have existed before time? What about when people say he is timeLESS?

By: ideclare

ideclare — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:34:52 +0000

If the first cause argument is phrased well, it talks only about things that come into being, allowing God to avoid the problem you mention. But in that case you can argue that there may well be something natural outside our universe that is not created.

Another, more difficult, way to argue can be summed up this way: 1) If God created everything, then God created time. 2) If time was created, then the cause of time could not have come before the creation of time (because the word “before” is meaningless without time). 3) If the cause of time’s creation was simultaneous with time’s creation, then cause does not need to precede effect. 4) If cause can be simultaneous with effect, then perhaps the universe is its own cause.

By: Christina

Christina — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:38:23 +0000

Can you give me an example of a good argument against the “first cause” argument? We are talking about this this week in my philosophy class.

What I said was that this is a fallacy called special pleading, because they say everything must have a beginning, therefore there must be a god who created everything. Who created god? Well he just always was.

I would love to hear some more arguments against this!

By: mustafa

mustafa — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:48:26 +0000

Greetings from Turkey…