God's Existence

Con says: "If we do not know what a god is, how do we know that it is capable of creating the universe? Just asserting god as a creator becomes a placeholder for ignorance and not an argument." We arrive at God's attributes and that He is the creator through argumentation, like what I presented. So God is mysterious, but then we define Him further through cause and effect reasoning. Con says: "As the GOE that Pro wants to present is utterly mysterious, poorly defined and understood, we have no reason to believe that there are not multiple GOEs of equal "unlimitation", distinguished only by some trivial non relevant equally mysterious attribute, or even equally undistinguished and unlimited. As there is inadequate definition here, there is no reason to believe that it is logically impossible. And Pro has failed to demonstrate the contrary." Things are distinguished by their limitations. 1 apple is distinguished from another apple because 1 apple lacks what the other has and so on. So it is not possible for there to be more than one ground of existence if all grounds of existence are all equally unlimited. Con says: "On the point of infinities. This argument and Theists arguments in general directly beg this question. The basic premise is that if there is no god then, you are left with an infinite series of events. Theists then argue that this is impossible and "wink, wink" there must be a god. I am pointing out here that invoking an infinite being is a slight of hand and as such is even more mysterious than the problem it claims to solve, and that the rebuttals are false. For instance Pro claimed in an earlier response that even though god was indeed infinite that did not imply "an infinitely long set of things". But I"m afraid it does, if a god existed and was infinite, god would indeed need to span an infinitely long set of mental thoughts to arrive at a decision to create the universe." I want to clarify that my argument is of course not discussing an infinite series of events. However, Con has argued that it is problematic that God would have an infinite number of mental thoughts because presumably God would never be able to analyze all of those thoughts. Yet I have maintained that God examines all of His knowledge together at once. He is eternally aware of all things. He does not need time to think them over and examine them as that would itself entail ignorance since He would need to weigh and consider different options etc. God is all knowing and does not need to do this and so He does not need time. Con says: "This is crystallized in the point about enternity. One can see the religious confusion in the response. Pro is effectively saying that god existing for all eternity, decided from the beginning of eternity (even though it did not decide because there was no time in which mental processes could act - timeless being -, and even though there is no beginning to eternity). Not to forget they were always perfectly good, perfectly just, perfectly powerful, knew everything that would happen, and always wanted a relationship with humanity. But still had the option of not creating the universe, even though if they had not they would have thwarted the desires and destiny. The confusion and mental gymnastics required to believe these propositions are not insubstantial." Con appears to be saying that God would need time in order to consider His choices (like whether to create the universe or not) however again, God does not need time because He is all knowing. He is eternally aware of all the options etc. One only needs time to deliberate if they lack knowledge and need to discern etc. in order to make a decision. Also, Con appears to be arguing that it would be wrong for God not to create the universe because this would thwart people's desires and that would be unjust (though I'm not sure if Con is arguing that or not). In response to that, I would say that uncreated people do not yet have desires since they are not yet created. I don't think it would be unjust for God to choose not to create people. Con says: "On the point about perfection. If a perfect god can create perfection (but chooses not to), does that not mean they lack perfection. In my mind yes, in yours not. Mine is a simple argument, anything less than perfection in the universe means god is limited or compromised in either power, autonomy, knowledge, compassion or some other attribute. Your reasoning as to why a perfect god would choose to create imperfection is "because he can". That does not seem to me to cut the logical mustard as an argument." Con continues to argue that God must only create perfect things. But as I argued in the last response, only God is perfect. This entails that anything that God creates would thereby be imperfect to some degree. So if God made a tree, that tree compared to God is imperfect. But what is wrong with God creating a tree? I do not see how it logically follow that God is imperfect merely by creating imperfect things. If Con is referring to the problem of suffering and why God allows suffering, then that is a separate discussion and one I would have to respond to in a separate debate since this one is coming to a close. But God merely creating things that are in some way imperfect, I do not see how that is impossible for God. Con says: "The analogy of a man on a beach does not work. All beaches and all men are of course within a spacetime context. The causal relationship always requires time, and all analogies to argue over simultaneous or eternal causation are deeply flawed, including the "man holding on to the branch", "the bowling ball falling on a cushion", and "the chandelier being held up by cantilever action". I"ve heard them all, and all infact require causes to proceed effects as one would expect and thus time. Otherwise the propagation of forces would be faster than the speed of light. What the Theist is infact arguing for is a new mode of causation (hitherto unknown) and completely mysterious, which may be reasonable as we are talking about the so called creation of the universe, but because it has no direct analogy it also lacks any explanatory power." Yes the man on the beach and other analogies that Con brings up are analogies. All analogies are imperfect at some level, but are still useful. The point is that it is logically coherent to conceive of something causing something else from all eternity. I don't see a problem with it. Con says: "Pro does not like the Quantum Field analogy. That is probably due to what we respectively mean by unlimited. I think to Pro unlimited genuinely means unlimited in all attributes. Whereas I would argue that properties of objects are limited by there concomitant identity and can only be described as unlimited if there identity also allows for this possibility. Hence a Quantum field is unlimited spacially but does not for example even know of our existence and never will." Right, by unlimited I mean unlimited in all respects. I'm not sure I understand what Con means when they say: "I would argue that properties of objects are limited by there concomitant identity and can only be described as unlimited if there identity also allows for this possibility." So all that I can say is that when I am talking about the ground of existence being unlimited, that I mean it is unlimited in all respects, not just spatially unlimited. In conclusion, I thank Con for the engaging discussion. Overall, I find the argument from contingency that I presented to be coherent and rationally justified. Con made a number of interesting objections, but I am not persuaded by them. Thank you