Where do we define "beginning? A pencil is made of wood and graphite. Do we go back as far as the first plants that evolved, or the formation of graphite, formed in the heart of exploding suns? We can go back even further, in explaining why such suns formed, and why.
Or do you want an explanation on the early man taking a burned piece of wood and marking on a cave wall?
I always ask this question to those who claim they know the attributes of their god.
Why do innocent children suffer and die from cancer?
The claim has no explanatory powers of course, theists use this unevidenced claim, in the mistaken belief it props up their unevidenced belief in an extant deity. It ticks all their boxes,
Ok, the Kalam argument. I take it you have abandoned all pretence of a rational discussion and now just want to get into arcane theological philosophy. The Kalam was a medieval academic movement within Islam that promoted and modified the original argument that Aristotle authored. In the 1100’s Al Ghazali rejected Aristotle and Avicenna’s preceding suggestions that the universe and human souls were immortal and uncreated. He offered no proof or reason; apparently it was just his opinion, but he was revered by the Kalam for his piety, not his absolute knowledge. As a medieval theist he did not have the advantage of Brother Lemaitre’s profound 20th century research.
I can only politely suggest you might find more rewarding exchanges on any philosophy or Islamic forum.
This is an atheist forum and speaking for myself, I reject the idea that anyone can possibly know what happened before the big bang (specifically 10x1(-13) seconds (Planck Time) before it happened because the laws of physics simply collapse before then). Any claims you or I make concerning the eternal nature or origin of the universe are purely imaginary.
I assume that you might doubt Planck Time could be a viable or even important concept. It could be as abstract as the dreaded “infinite regress”, but when it comes to reason and rationality and more importantly evidence, it’s science and never philosophy or religion, that makes the most compelling, consistent and sustainable explanations for every event and concept that leads up to Lemaitre’s ‘primeval atom’, supposedly 13.8 billion years ago.
None of us have any idea if the universe existed in another form before the big bang, or if it was a black hole for thousands of millions of years before that, or if it were another expanding universe before even that. But still you confidently insist that you know, on the strength of unsubstantiated medieval philosophical arguments that the entire universe was purposely created, “popped” out of nothing by a disembodied, timeless, immaterial, conscious deity. Thats not science and its not compelling philosophy.
Its ok to say you dont really know how or why the universe originated. I am sure your god, rather than being appalled at the lack of faith, would understand and probably appreciate the honest confession.
Do you know what a begging the question fallacy is? It’s a fallacy in informal logic, when some makes unevidenced assumptions in an argument about the very thing they are arguing for. As you have done there with your unevidenced assumption that a deity is infinite.
Now you have added a tautology to your begging the question fallacy.
Which deity are you talking about, and what objective evidence can you demonstrate that it is real?
See above, evidence please.
So you keep asserting, again you’ll have to demonstrate some objective evidence for all these assertions and assumptions, ir I can only dismiss them as per Hitchens’s razor.
quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs negātur
Your question/answer in response to my:
So first… I am looking for some type of description of what “outside time/space” is which still has not been addressed. You said that god is not bound by it and I asked simply, does god move? (you seem to know a lot about god, so a question whether it can move).
Why is god a “he”? You said “no one could see god” (apparently this is what is unimaginable, his looks) YET someone imagined the “sex” of this deity?
Demonstrate a beginning to the universe. As far as we know, the universe formed from a singularity that began to expand. This says nothing about the cosmos and nothing about the possibility that expanding is exactly what singularities do.
You have made the assertion “The universe had a beginning.” Demonstrate this.
No it doesn’t…
Please offer an example of something outside of the universe, with sufficient objective evidence, and an accurate definition.
A pencil exists within the physical universe, and we also of sufficient objective evidence to show they are designed and made by humans. You’re comparing apples to oranges.
Everything on earth was created at some point in time. It’s kind of like a food chain, or a pyramid. Pencils are made out of graphite powder. Graphite powder it is found in metamorphic and igneous rocks. Igneous rocks are formed when magma cools and crystallizes. Magma is firmed by the melting of rocks in the earths lithosphere. Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago. That means the earth had a beginning when it was formed. The Big Bang began about 14 billion years ago. That’s how I conclude that the Big Bang was created because we’ve never seen anything in the universe that popped out from nothing. There always has to be something to create something.
Because that’s a test from God. Are you trying to imply that if people suffer that there’s no God?
I did not say the universe popped out of nothing that is illogical. I’m saying the universe has to come from something. If we say, that something had a creator, it would go on forever, witch is called infinite regress. Their cannot be an infinite chain of causes going back. This makes sense that their has to be a first cause that’s uncaused.
Glad to see you’re at least open to acknowledging that the quantum vacuum may have just existed without a cause.
Then how was your god created?
No, I was asking why (if your god exists) ,it inflicts so much pain and suffering on innocent children.
To teach anyone, you do not have to torture and kill them, you provide positive training. Unless, of course, if your god is a sadistic homicidal monster. And unfortunately, the many passages in the bible support that hypothesis.
BULLSHIT - if this is an example of its ways being “higher” than ours - I CALL BULLSHIT! You know why?
The human doctor trying to save the child’s life; the human scientists looking for treatments and pain control; the human nurses and hospital staff trying to make the stay as comfortable as possible…and bring the child some joy; the human parents, consumed with worry, making the best decisions they can for the benefit of their child …
Those are examples of love and compassion and humanity and empathy… if this is your god’s arena for “testing” - it can fuck off.
Edited to add: understand that my argument for for statement “it’s a test from God” is directed at this form of “deity” and not you - you are only trying to explain what you have been taught.
That’s an argumentum ad ingorantiam fallacy, something is not rationally validated just because of a lack of contrary evidence. Even were this premise not fallacious, it doesn’t remotely evidence a deity.
Thus making a deity creator redundant, as just one link in a chain of events, with it’s own creator. Unless you use a special pleading fallacy to exempt it of course, as most theists do when using first cause arguments.
So which is it?..
Randomhuman123
I am certain that you meant to say something more along the lines of, ‘If there were no initial creator, causes would go on forever, which is called ‘infinite regress’.’
The theological argument against ‘infinite regress’ is the basis of the claim for the existence of a creator god. The reason supporting the argument is that there is no evidence for any infinite regress just as there is no evidence for the existence of the state we call ‘nothing’.
Science makes no claim to infinite regresses for the very same lack of evidence. However while 13.8 billion years is not infinite, there is no evidence that events occurring before the moment of Planck Time ceased occurring after it.
Science maintains it is not yet possible to describe anything beyond Planck Time, but this does not warrant any claims that physical event ceased altogether and did not continue for an infinite amount of time before the ‘big bang’. Nor do theological claims provide any evidence proving the pre-existence of any creator god.
Philosophical arguments against infinite regresses are necessary when discussing and debating abstract theoretical issues, where infinities of any kind serve only as distractions and lead to possible errors, but philosophical authority does not necessarily override physical events for the very pertinent reason that philosophy is no longer regarded as sufficient to describe them. In the days of the Kalam, natural philosophy, was the branch of thought that covered physical events in nature but that whole area of investigation was super-ceded by the study of the physical sciences that rely strictly on measurement, record, evidence, experimentation, reason and rationality and not on theological presuppositions.
You have not mentioned your particular religion, but according to the Christian tradition their god created the universe “ex nihilo” or more specifically their god created the materials for the universe out of “nothing” due to the philosophical adage “ex nihilo nihil fit” - “nothing comes from nothing”. So either the creator god created the universe, or at the very least created, out of nothing, the materials to make the universe. But this still does not explain where their god was before he began manifesting. And this is the original question of the OP which, not surprisingly, remains stubbornly unanswered. Where is this place beyond time and space?
Muslims, if I understand correctly, believe their god exists within the current reality, not outside it, and for this reason, it controls all physical activity; it is their god’s will that any physical event happens. A neat idea for explaining why not all matches from the same matchbox will ignite.
For myself I think the ancient myths of the Summerians and Akkadians that preceded the Abrahamic faiths by thousands of years were probably closer to the physical truth wherein the materials used by their gods to create the heavens and earth came from a pre-existing, infinite, dark primordial ocean of chaos which neatly describes the formless seething, super-dense, super-heated conditions that science suggests may have existed before Planck Time.