by jimwalton » Tue Jun 13, 2017 3:09 pm
> Who designed God?
It seems you didn't read by post. I'll cut and paste it again: "We ultimately have to wrestle with the conundrum of 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' The universe itself presupposes that some existed before it (if the Big Bang is correct) and that pre-existing something had causative force. If the Big Bang is where it all began (which one can fairly well grant, at least in the thinking of present-day scientific theory), we must ask what preceded the "bang." Current theory is that everything was a singularity. Again, according to theory, a singularity as defined by science is a point at which all the laws of physics break down (are non-existent).
Therefore, we have to presuppose the pre-existence of something, and current theory says the starting point cannot be scientific. My argument presupposes the existence of an eternal, timeless, personal, intelligent, powerful, purposeful, moral, free-willed, meaningful cause. If we are going to infer the most reasonable conclusion, presupposing God is more logical than presupposing science."
In other words, something is eternal, and we know it's not science, physics, natural laws, or matter. We're intelligent people, right? We know that if we have nothing, we get nothing. If anything can pop into existence from nothing (like a pink unicorn), then there is no such thing as science. But there is something.
We know that we have an eternal cause. Something always was (whether matter, energy, a singularity, a metaphysical being). Something must have always existed. There must be some eternal first cause, whatever it was.
We know that we have a timeless cause. If the past is infinite, we would have no present. Imagine going to the deli counter. There you see a red thingy that says "Before you take a ticket, you have to take a ticket from the red thingy to the right." And there’s a sign on that one that says the same thing. And on the next one. And the next. Only if we ever get to one that says "Take a ticket here" can we run the sequence and get back to the counter. We can only get back to the counter if the line of red thingys isn't infinite. Only if the past is finite can there be a present, so the cause of the universe must be timeless.
There must be a personal cause. Impersonal causes must have first causes. Only personal causes are capable of being first causes. Kinetic energy is energy is motion; potential energy is energy stored. The only way something begins in motion is if there is a first cause. What puts a system in motion?
We must have an intelligent cause. There are three types of data (random data, which doesn't require an intelligent cause, ordered data, such as snowflakes, which don't necessarily require an intelligent cause, and information data). There is no example in science that informational data can come from anything but an intelligent cause.
There must be a moral cause. We all know there is such a thing as right and wrong, good and evil. Though we disagree on some of what goes into those categories, we all subscribe to such objectivities as the existence of right and wrong. If we infer the most reasonable conclusion, we infer an objective moral source for objective moral realities. Without it there is not possible objective evaluation of an action or a thought as good or evil, because such things are only based on opinion and one's own perception. Everything would just be morally blank. There would be nothing wrong with murdering someone, and nothing good about saving a bus full of children from crashing down a cliff. Elaborate complex chemical reactions do not have any moral value or moral agency. Everyone would simply be a physical collection of atoms. Everything would simply just be. Without God, we might live in a MadMax world of insanity and chaos, but we could call that bad—just what is. We might live in a humanist utopia, but we couldn't call that good—just what is.
In other words, the world as we know it can only come from an eternal, timeless, personal, intelligent, powerful, purposeful, moral, free will, meaningful cause. And that's God. He always was. Something always was, and God is the most logical answer.
> If evil does exist, then God does not exist, is not omnipotent, omniscient, and/or is not omnibenevolent.
This is not logically consistent. You can't put this in a reasonable syllogism because your points won't hold. From my side, if what you are saying is true, I have to abandon one of these propositions: God exists, God is omnipotent, God is omniscient, God is omnibenevolent, and evil exists. But none of these propositions formally entail a logical contradiction. To create a necessary contradictions, something must be added, but it has never been done. These premises do not necessarily contradict. The burden of proof is on you to put forth a syllogism that supports your case.
> The underlying assumption is that God communicates through revelations, which, the assumptions made in the definition of God (specifically, existence of omnipotent beings) will make it difficult to validate the authenticity of revelations without using special pleading
It depends what you will accept as validation. If God truly exists, and if he is truly a spirit being, and if he is truly transcendent in his nature, then revelation is the only possible route to knowledge. So what will you accept as validation that is an appropriate measure of the object at hand, viz. the revelation of God? (If, as Christians claim, he is a metaphysical reality, then science, repeatability, experimentation, and solely physical evidences are not necessarily the proper measure, just as science and experimentation are not the proper measure of how to determine how much I love my wife.) So what do you propose?