God Exists

I did not argue that god is not timeless. I pointed out the errors in Craig's analysis which concluded that God could not be timeless this argument tied in to attempting to prove the existence of tensed facts then analyzing their existence relative to a timeless God. Furthermore, the omniscience argument was not intended to directly counter a point that was made but rather in tangent to other points which seek to reconcile the existence of tensed facts. This is in no way irrelevant to the debate as the existence of tensed facts is a key issue. 1. a temporal world exists 2. God is omniscient 3. God knows all relative tensed facts. 4. God exists separate from tensed facts. The idea that a finite universe must be caused can to shown through a deductive argument. 1.whatever begins to exist has a cause 2. the universe began to exist 3. the universe has a cause. I will address each of these premises in turn. Premise (1) seems to be true to anyone who examines it. It is constantly confirmed in our experience. The philosopher David Hume, known for his skepticism, wrote that he "never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause." The most important word in this premise is "begins". If something did not exist and then existed, there must be a cause. The first major piece of evidence for premise (2) is the second law of thermodynamics. This is a fundamental law which states that in any system the processes always tend towards an equilibrium. Energy runs down and "entropy" increases. Our universe is heading for what is called "heat death". It is what happens when your cup of hot coffee, if not drunk, reaches the same temperature as the room. Now when we observe our universe we know that it has not run down yet. Entropy is not at a maximum. This means that it is in the process of reaching that state. Such a process is time limited and had to start at some point with a state of low entropy. This means there must have been a start. The second major piece of evidence for premise (2) is the big bang theory. We will not go into this now in any detail. Suffice it to say that this theory is held by the vast majority of cosmologists. The evidence for this comes particularly from two observations: firstly, the universe is expanding, as seen with the red shift of receding galaxies and secondly, the cosmic microwave background radiation surrounds us in every direction. The expansion can be run backwards in time and when we do that we come to a beginning. The cosmic background radiation has been very confirmatory of the afterglow from the big bang. Physicists tell us that it is at exactly the expected intensity. So premise (2) seems to be confirmed to most people"s satisfaction. But what about the other theories already touched upon; for instance of how the universe may be oscillating or has been spawned from other universes? The main issue here is that we do not know if the big bang was the real start or came from some of these other conditions. I think it is helpful here to use the term "universe" to mean the entire physical reality that has ever existed, be it our one known universe or the series of oscillating universes or the multiple universes that might be spawning other universes (or indeed any of the other ideas floating around such as the "vacuum fluctuation universe" or "quantum gravity universe"). All of these still come under the question: did such a physical reality begin to exist? This is where the Kalam argument comes in to play. The person who denies a first cause has to argue strenuously for an infinite series of causes going back into the infinite past. This is the only way in which to deny a first, uncaused cause. The question therefore comes down to whether an actual infinite series can exist. What follows is the simplified mathematical part of the Kalam cosmological argument5 which seeks to prove that an actual infinite series of anything is not possible. It is based on the idea that the existence of an infinite number of anything leads to logical contradictions. There are 3 mathematical arguments, which I will give in order: First mathematical argument There are two types of infinites, potential infinites and actual ones. Potential infinites are used all the time by mathematicians in equations. They are useful but potential. The term "Actual infinites" refers to real things which are infinite; it is not enough just to conceive of this but there must actually be an infinite number of things. The best known example to illustrate this is called the "Hilbert"s Hotel Paradox" (named after the mathematician David Hilbert). Hilbert"s Hotel has an infinite number of rooms, each occupied by a guest. As there are an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests, every room is occupied; the hotel cannot take any more guests. There is a "No Vacancies" sign showing. There is also a "Guests Welcome!" sign showing. When a new guest arrives the manager asks the guest in room no. 1 to move into no.2 and the guest in no. 2 to move to no. 3...and so on. As for any room n there is a room n 1, every guest can be moved to a different room. This is to free up room no.1 for the new guest. Before the new guest has arrived there is no room left and yet we see that the guest can be accommodated after all. This is clearly paradoxical; it is not possible that a hotel both can and cannot accommodate a new guest. Hilbert"s Hotel is therefore impossible. David Hilbert said: "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality.....The role that remains for the infinite is solely that of an idea. This argument draws on the idea that actual infinities cannot be traversed. If I were to set out on a journey to an infinitely distant point in space, it would not just take me a long time to get there; rather, I would never get there. A part of the journey would always remain, no matter how long I took. Similarly, if I were to start counting to infinity, I would never finish. Now if the past were infinite, then it would not just take a long time for the present to arrive; it would never arrive. No matter how long time had passed, we would still be working through the infinite past. It is impossible to traverse an infinite period of time. Clearly though, the present has arrived, the past has been traversed. The past, therefore, cannot be infinite, but must be finite. The universe has a beginning. Which leads us to premise (3): "Therefore the universe had a cause." This premise depends completely on premise (2). We have confirmed premise (2) and therefore we can conclude that premise (3) is correct. If the universe had a cause we rightly ask ourselves, what sort of cause? This is where philosophy and science come together to point to an uncaused and eternal, non physical cause. The first cause had to be uncaused, because we have learnt that there is no actual infinite series of causes. When someone like Richard Dawkins asks, "who caused God?",8 they are confusing the issue. There simply had to be a first cause which has not been caused; otherwise we go down the infinite regress which we have dismissed. The key to understanding the regression argument is the point of an illusory static time. the regress in an A-Series is not contradictory. A regress of illusions in B-Series is. you experience a non-illusory world. Furthermore, we would expect a dislocation of time if time is illusory. If the passage of time doesn't exist then it's passage is subjective. without a biological function common to all, then this illusory, subjective should have breaches. it makes more logical sense that time is real and universal rather than illusory and subjective. For his next point, time is rigid. our perception of it may shift but this does not make the objective time any longer or shorter. if I am in danger and adrenaline causes a longer experience, a minute is still a minute without fail regardless of my perception of it's length. a counterargument is perfectly sufficient but I can provide a quick refutation Relativity theory never even talks about simultaneity. It talks about a different relation: simultaneity relative to a frame. Likewise, relativity theory never talks about spatial or temporal distances. It talks about spatial or temporal distances relative to a frame. These are different concepts: simultaneity, spatial distance and temporal distance are binary relations. Simultaneity relative to a frame, spatial distance relative to a frame and temporal distnace relative to a frame are ternary relations (the frame is a relatum). All the stuff Relativity says about simultaneity relative to a frame, spatial distance relative to a frame and temporal distance relative to a frame may very well be true. But wouldn't it follow, then, that contrary to relativity theory there is a privileged reference frame? There are two questions here: (a) Does it follow that there is a privileged reference frame? (b) Would this be contrary to relativity theory? And neither question has a clearly positive answer. The standard answer to (a) is this. If we have absolute simultaneity and a Minkowski spacetime, then we can define a privileged frame as the inertial frame whose simultaneity relation matches the absolute simultaneity relation. But nothing that was said so far guarantees that any inertial frame has a simultaneity relation that matches our absolute simultaneity relation. Suppose, for instance, that there are two points, a and b, that are absolutely simultaneous but where b is in the forward light-cone of a. Then not only will there be no inertial frame according to which a and b are simultaneous, but there won't be any foliation by spacelike hypersurfaces. zackrisson source https://evolutionnews.org... the fifty two card hand is nowhere near as low as the probability of the universe existing I would address but I have no letters.