From: crs@milton.u.washington.edu (Cliff Slaughterbeck)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Does God Exist?  And proof of existence!
Date: 20 Aug 92 06:17:00 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

rsteele@adam.ll.mit.edu (Rob Steele) writes:
>stehman@hubcap.clemson.edu (Jeff Stehman) writes:
>> >Matter itself is not the great first cause...
> 
>> I've heard this one from many, many people, and I've never understood  
>it.
>> Why are so many people capable of believing in a creator that has always
>> existed, yet incapable of accepting that matter might have always  
>existed?
>
>In either case you are faced with a mystery.  I find the mystery of a  
>uncreated God more exciting somehow than that of an uncreated universe.   
>But that's not an argument.  I was reading Peter Kreeft's excellent  
>summary of Aquinas the other day and St. Thomas adduced an interesting  
>"proof" of the existence of God (I quote "proof" because I don't  
>understand logic well enough to feel comfortable with it unquoted.)
>
>I paraphrase from memory:
>
>o Given infinite time, all possible configurations of things will occur.
>o One possible configuration of things is that nothing exist.
>o Having once occurred, nothing else could ever exist afterward.
>o Things exist, therefore time and things had a beginning and are finite.

I am a part time hanger on to this newsgroup, and have found this thread
quite interesting.  I have a few comments based on the views of modern
physics about Aquinas's proof that I would like to share with you.  I'll
take it line by line...

1) "Given infinte time, all possible configurations of things will occur."

	This is not obvious to me, at least.  The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
	tells us that entropy always increases with time.  While it is
	true that this "law" is probabalistic, it is quite general and on
	the scale of complexity in the universe, it becomes less likely all
	of the time.

2) "One possible configuration of things is that nothing exist."

	This is also questionable.  With modern understanding of the
	nature of relativity, we believe that energy and matter can be
	transformed into one another, but that still doesn't leave us
	with "nothing". (I'll ignore the possibilities of what happens
	at black hole singularities, since this is not understood--it
	could, however, provide a way to remove mass-energy from the
	universe.  Nobody really knows the answer to that question).
	Obviously, God is quite capable of divinely suspending the laws
	of physics and removing whatever matter He/She wants.  Since
	Aquinas was trying to prove the existence of God, this is 
	circular, however, and is not valid logically.

3) "Having once occurred, nothing else could ever exist afterward."

	The modern view of "nothing" is something called the "bare 
	vaccuum", another thing that can't exist.  It is in fact
	possible to create material from the vaccuum, for a short
	time, via Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.  This leads
	to predictable consequences which have been tested by
	quantum mechanics.  The thing is, material "created" this
	way decays away in the same way very quickly, still leaving
	you with the bare vaccuum.  The other complication is that
	if one invokes singularities in black holes as a way out of
	logical step 2, then they also provide a way for matter to 
	reappear here in step 3.

4) "Things exist, therefore time and things had a definite beginning and
    are finite."

	I find no logical error in this step (assuming the others are
	true leads directly to this statement.)


I have yet to see a convincing logical proof of the existence of God.  I
suspect this has to do with trying to use the logic of the universe to say
something about the nature of God which is greater than this universe.  It
can't be done.

Personally, I find that the greatest testimony to the existence of God is
to witness His/Her creation.  How magical is a bird!  How beautiful the
sunset!  How awe inspiring is the birth of a new child!  What a marvelous
creation we are heir to.  Even the simplest things like the existence of
chemical bonds defy my imagination and creativity.  After 20+ years of
formal education and training, I understand a little bit better of the
question of how it works, but have learned zero about why (from science).

I'll grant that my wanderings here have done little if anything to distinguish
between a Christian concept of God, and that of any other religion.  I
have no good answer to that question, and only can appeal faith in the
Lord Jesus.  The original text has been deleted in this thread, but I 
recall that one of the questions posed by the original author was "OK, so
I accept Christ, what is that supposed to make me want to do?....". If I
may, I would like to offer a simple suggestion for one way to put a
Christian world view into practice.  Read the Beatitudes (Mat Ch 5-7).
Carefully.  Think long and hard about every sentence.  Tear into it.
Spend all day thinking about what Jesus told the crowds.  Pray about it.
Remember what Jesus replied when he was asked what the most important
commandment was (Please, Mr. Moderator, if you can recall the scriptural
reference, enter it here as I have forgotten it!) 
[Mark 12:28 and para.  Jesus' reply quoted Deut. 6:4-5 for loving God
and Lev 19:18 for the Golden Rule --clh]
The greatest commandment
is to love the Lord God with all of your heart and all your soul. Then,
Jesus, without prompting, added the second greatest commandment--love your
neighbors in a similar way.  After all, we humans have been created in the
Lord's image.  Now, if you claim Jesus as Lord and Saiviour, I suspect that
you will start to see life in a somewhat different light.  When you get into
an argument with someone, ask yourself what Jesus would do if he was in your
shoes.  I hope that you will find the arguments will end sooner with both
parties happier than if you wouldn't have followed that thought.

****************************************************************************
Cliff Slaughterbeck           * 
Dept. of Physics, FM-15       *   Truth is a statue, and we are all just 
University of Washington      *   a bunch of pigeons. 
Seattle, WA 98195             *
****************************************************************************