[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

Classic situation - your argument is self contradicting. Cant you see that if you reject something purely because it is uncaused, THEN YOU MUST REJECT AN UNCAUSED GOD. God is thus absolutely not a solution to the problem of creation.

Not at all. For one thing, you are making the presupposition of time as a line instead of a plane or brane (Einstein.) And geometric physics strongly suggests additional dimensions, both spatial and temporal (Vafa, Wesson.)

The sense of causation and an arrow of time is event oriented. But were it not for time, events would not occur. Likewise, were it not for space, things would not exist.

No so-called random event can occur in the absence of space/time, so they are only pseudo-random. And we cannot say a thing is random in the system anyway when we don't even know what the system "is."

Geometry is the presupposition of all cosmologies whether cyclic, ekpyrotic, multi-verse, multi-world, inflationary, imaginary time, hesitating, etc.

More importantly, it is an obviously illogical argument that the uncaused cause must be caused.

To the contrary, the void in which all cosmologies must begin has no geometry whatsoever; there is no space, no time, no energy, no matter, no thing and most especially no causation in the void. As our resident physicist put it "existence exists."

The Hebrew term for God as the Creator in the void is Ayn Sof The term basically means “no-thing” — One without end from which all being emerges and into which all being dissolves.

Infinity is merely boundarylessness - but there are no things in the void to which boundaries would apply - no geometry of any kind - only existence - transcending and singular. Existence exists.

Or as God said of Himself, I AM that I AM.

Another way to meditate on the void is consider the difference between zero and null. Zero in a number sequence such as "301" means there are no tens. If it were null, tens do not exist at all.

The void is not merely zero spatial and temporal dimensions. It is null, no space, no time, no causation.

Again, only God can be the uncaused cause of the beginning.

[TrisB]

Thankyou all three, I'll address you in turn.

TChris - Yes Dawkins does judge the old testament relative to the modern zeitgeist (as he wrote), and makes no illusion of it. I think he is justified to reject the, at worst, genocidal aspects of the old testament, and this is an accurate reflection of almost everyone on the planet's opinion. This is certainly not just about Dawkins' personal views. We cannot rob ourselves of the ability to make such stark moral judgments on the grounds that we don't know what god would want. Dawkings is not putting himself on a moral throne, but merely leveling the playing field saying that morality cannot objectively be derived from scripture.

Anyway, why can't we decide for ourselves collectively? Paraphrasing Galileo, why would god give us the ability to think, and then not have us not use it?

jwalsh: [Creation is not a problem for creationists ] Indeed not, but our friend tried previously to reason physically that a God must exist to solve this problem, which it doesn't.

Alamo-girl: [Again, only God can be the uncaused cause of the beginning] Not sure you have grasped the nub here. Ok clearly you are DEFINING God as something that is uncaused. How can you argue that the only thing that solves causelessness is a custom-made concept purposefully defined as being uncaused? As I said, it doesn't solve the problem - its like defining the slepojebog as something which hypothetically cures cancer, therefor the cure for cancer is slepojebog. Lets all celebrate!

But seriously, why in principle can't a physical phenomenon be uncaused if God can? Surely If God exists in a plane where causality doesn't exist, why can't a purely physical phenomena from this plane exist, and govern our universe? Why is it requisite that uncaused phenomena must be godly, being the guy you prey to etc. What is inherent to these personal-god characteristics which allow God to be uncaused? Why would God being able to read our minds and influence people etc have forbearance on whether he needed a designer? Why must you associate the two? I think you're just trying to find a logical platform to package your illogical beliefs within, which wouldn't hold up on there own.

Thankyou all for reading my musings and replying!