Proving god's existence through reason

T

thewiseOne

Registered Member
Hey people. I would just like to start a general discussion about
everybody's thoughts on whether it is logical that god can or cannot
exist. I've been stuck on this question ever since i was 10 years old,
and I never get a serious answer from anybody i ask. Right now, im
edging towards the God does exist end of the spectrum, and here's my
reasoning: There couldn't have been a time where there was NOTHING at all, because something cannot come to being from nothing. Therefore, there must have been something that didn't come from anything, something that has existed forever. If there is something that has existed forever, that means that there was also a point where time was created, because if that thing(god) had existed in the past for an infinite amount of time, that means everything that exists(the universe) will have already existed and would have ended as well. The reason why i don't choose to think that the universe has always existed is because there must be an incentive to create everything; god being a spirit, it makes perfect sense that he would create time and everything else. My question is why did god, who existed before time, all of a sudden choose to create time?
 
Your logic is flawed. Something can come from nothing, look up the Casimir Effect. And it can return to nothing, such as if matter and anti-matter were to combine.
 
thewiseOne said:
Hey people. I would just like to start a general discussion about
everybody's thoughts on whether it is logical that god can or cannot
exist. I've been stuck on this question ever since i was 10 years old,
and I never get a serious answer from anybody i ask. Right now, im
edging towards the God does exist end of the spectrum, and here's my
reasoning: There couldn't have been a time where there was NOTHING at all, because something cannot come to being from nothing. Therefore, there must have been something that didn't come from anything, something that has existed forever. If there is something that has existed forever, that means that there was also a point where time was created, because if that thing(god) had existed in the past for an infinite amount of time, that means everything that exists(the universe) will have already existed and would have ended as well. The reason why i don't choose to think that the universe has always existed is because there must be an incentive to create everything; god being a spirit, it makes perfect sense that he would create time and everything else. My question is why did god, who existed before time, all of a sudden choose to create time?
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Aquinas' Five Proofs are pretty good. For a good defence of them read Aquinas: A beginner's guide. The argument you are trying to advance is very similar to the third way.

You are correct in implying that from nothing, nothing comes. It is logically and philosophically sound. When physicists and scientists (in general) talk about "something from nothing" they refer to empty space. The scientific and philosophical definitions of nothingness are not the same as Ethan Siegel points out.

Why was time created? Is time even real or is it just our expression of change? The obvious question then is why did God as an Unmoved Mover/Pure Actuality/First Cause/Necessary Being/Being Itself/That Just Is Good/That Just Is Power/That Just Is Intelligence/Whose Essence and Existence Are Identical etc. create change or things that change.
 
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If there's something, then it isn't nothing. "Something from nothing" means we don't know where something came from. We do know, however, that the vacuum isn't nothing, so "something from the vacuum" is meaningful.

Now all we need is to figure out where the vacuum comes from; new vacuum is appearing constantly--note that, according to Penrose, QM isn't about "sizes" but about interactions at macroscopic scales (e.g. cosmic expansion), which inform us about microscopic scales.
Unfortunately there is still a big gap between these scales, in terms of the energy required to expand the universe at the rate we observe, and the vacuum energy.

Maybe FTL neutrinos can explain the discrepancy? Or maybe the expansion (and spacetime) has "extra dimensions" that soak up the difference like a kind of sponge or something? That is, the macroscopic expansion is observed at a "smaller" scale than it should because of the extra degrees of freedom the energy propagates in?

Maybe that's why we think there's a God. Just throwing it out there.
 
thewiseOne said:
Hey people. I would just like to start a general discussion about
everybody's thoughts on whether it is logical that god can or cannot
exist. I've been stuck on this question ever since i was 10 years old,
and I never get a serious answer from anybody i ask. Right now, im
edging towards the God does exist end of the spectrum, and here's my
reasoning: There couldn't have been a time where there was NOTHING at all, because something cannot come to being from nothing. Therefore, there must have been something that didn't come from anything, something that has existed forever. If there is something that has existed forever, that means that there was also a point where time was created, because if that thing(god) had existed in the past for an infinite amount of time, that means everything that exists(the universe) will have already existed and would have ended as well. The reason why i don't choose to think that the universe has always existed is because there must be an incentive to create everything; god being a spirit, it makes perfect sense that he would create time and everything else. My question is why did god, who existed before time, all of a sudden choose to create time?
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one could accept that time (amongst other things) is an eternal contingent potency of god - IOW where ever there is god, there is time - and aspects of creation go through cycles of dormancy to flourishing (just like winter compared to spring)
 
thewiseOne said:
Hey people. I would just like to start a general discussion about everybody's thoughts on whether it is logical that god can or cannot exist.
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I don't think that any of the so-called "proofs" of God's existence that I've seen were convincing.

The question of whether God's existence or non-existence is "logical" is probably a different question.

I don't think that either view is necessarily self-contradictory. Some combinations of supposed divine attributes may well be logically inconsistent, though.

A case might be made for the view that the word 'God' is simply meaningless unless it is given some further definition to pin down what's actually being referred to. Is 'God' the hero of the Bible or the Quran? Vishnu or Shiva? The Stoic world-soul? Is 'God' a philosophical abstraction such as 'first cause' or 'ground of being'? Must 'God' be imagined as a person?

And a very good case might be made for the idea that belief in God isn't a well justified belief.

Right now, im edging towards the God does exist end of the spectrum, and here's my reasoning: There couldn't have been a time where there was NOTHING at all, because something cannot come to being from nothing.
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Do we really know that 'something can't come from nothing'? There seem to be some implicit ideas about universal causality in that view.

Why couldn't reality just... suddenly start at some point in time, with no past, no time at all, before that moment? In other words, if we look into the past, why can't we just come to a first intial uncaused moment, beyond with no further progress into the past is possible?

Therefore, there must have been something that didn't come from anything
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Doesn't that contradict your idea that something can't come from nothing?

something that has existed forever.
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I don't think that imagining something as having existed forever gets rid of the something from nothing problem. Why does this hypothetical infinite-duration being exist at any particular moment? What's keeping it in existence and preventing it from being... nothing?

If there is something that has existed forever, that means that there was also a point where time was created,
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That sounds contradictory. If time has an initial origin, a beginning zero-point, then how can something have existed forever? Nothing could be older than the temporal interval between its 'now' and the origin.

because if that thing(god) had existed in the past for an infinite amount of time, that means everything that exists(the universe) will have already existed and would have ended as well. The reason why i don't choose to think that the universe has always existed is because there must be an incentive to create everything; god being a spirit, it makes perfect sense that he would create time and everything else.
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Why should people believe that this hypothetical 'God' thing is a 'spirit'? (Whatever they are.) Why should we assume that 'spirits' must have motives? You seem to just be testifying to your own faith in personal theism there. That needs additional discussion.

My question is why did god, who existed before time, all of a sudden choose to create time?
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I'm not convinced that imagining 'God' as a human-style 'personality' is even consistent with imagining 'God' as 'eternal' in a timeless sense. Our personal lives necessarily unfold in time. We learn, we react, we decide. All in time.
 
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Yazata said:
Doesn't that contradict your idea that something can't come from nothing?
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No, I never stated that god came from nothing. something coming from nothing is different than something not coming from anything. The latter is true when there was something that's always existed, that being god(which is what i believe to be true)



Yazata said:
I don't think that imagining something as having existed forever gets rid of the something from nothing problem. Why does this hypothetical infinite-duration being exist at any particular moment? What's keeping it in existence and preventing it from being... nothing?
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There is no something from nothing problem. By logic that can never happen, just like how a box of tissues can't appear out of thin air.



Yazata said:
That sounds contradictory. If time has an initial origin, a beginning zero-point, then how can something have existed forever? Nothing could be older than the temporal interval between its 'now' and the origin.
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What i meant was something existing before time existed. =D i wouldn't know how to describe that in terms of duration



Yazata said:
Why should people believe that this hypothetical 'God' thing is a 'spirit'? (Whatever they are.) Why should we assume that 'spirits' must have motives? You seem to just be testifying to your own faith in personal theism there. That needs additional discussion.
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Which leads to my actual question: If god wasn't a spirit and didn't have "motives", how could he have all of a sudden created time and everything else? Someone please answer this
 
thewiseOne said:
By logic that can never happen, just like how a box of tissues can't appear out of thin air.
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Your logic is wrong.
It could happen, it's just statistically unlikely.

Which leads to my actual question: If god wasn't a spirit and didn't have "motives", how could he have all of a sudden created time and everything else? Someone please answer this
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Oops, you're pre-supposing an answer.
Not the way to go.
 
Dywyddyr said:
There is no something from nothing problem. By logic that can never happen, just like how a box of tissues can't appear out of thin air.
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Your logic is wrong.
It could happen, it's just statistically unlikely.
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The question should not be if something can appear out of nothing but rather can something appear out of nothing without someone bringing it into existence and sustain it for the duration of it's existence. This someone is "the one".
 
So your logic is right? I find it hard to believe that one can claim that the law of cause and effect is wrong logic. Also, in what way am i presupposing an answer?
 
Big Chiller said:
The question should not be if something can appear out of nothing but rather can something appear out of nothing without someone bringing it into existence and sustain it for the duration of it's existence. This someone is "the one".
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False. See the link in post #2.

thewiseOne said:
So your logic is right? I find it hard to believe that one can claim that the law of cause and effect is wrong logic.
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Pardon?

Also, in what way am i presupposing an answer?
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In this way:
If god wasn't a spirit and didn't have "motives", how could he have all of a sudden created time and everything else?
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It presupposes that:
A) god exists.
B) he created time and everything else.
 
thewiseOne said:
So your logic is right? I find it hard to believe that one can claim that the law of cause and effect is wrong logic. Also, in what way am i presupposing an answer?
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Cause and effect don't apply on the quantum level, only probabilities, thanks to the uncertainty principle.
 
What is it that we know as a truth?

‘Nothing’ cannot exist because it has no existence. It is thus not a something that we can talk about being, since it is not there at all, yet if we took away all ‘something’, it seems that not anything would be left. And if there were a lack of anything existing at all, then there never could be anything of existence, since the lack of anything would have no properties to make it so.

However, there is something existing, and yet there is nothing to make its basics of, another very key point that is often overlooked, so our logic has to give, either way, or both, as it would seem, but we cannot get away from the fact that there is something, so it must be that somethings could really be ‘sum-things’ that must cancel to zero overall, but cannot, in actuality, since nothing cannot be.

Something is a necessity, because it is here, presumably an effect without a cause, as cause and effect cannot go on forever in an infinite regress; thus, its ‘happening’ must be replaced by an equation—the zero balance, and we do observe this in the opposites of pair emission and their annihilation, which produces light, and so light, too, is perhaps ‘sum-things’ of opposites somehow living in peace, as well as with gravity vs. stuff, and maybe space vs. black holes in space. Yet, a basic thing with no source is still a total dilemma, for then of what and when could its amount, its limited instantiatiions, and their individual natures have been defined? It must be that they could be no other way, but still, how are they here with no source? What gives? Existence does not seem to be able to be of just more existent things with no source. It does not seem that a thing can be fundamental.

We have shown that something amounts to nothing overall, but how come, beyond that nothing cannot be and so something must? Although we can conceive of there being a lack of anything, this is not the case, so it is out, yet, somehow, the something is related to it, perhaps in the only way it can be, summing to it. Perhaps no such distinctions should or can be made, but there is indeed something, rather than a lack of it all.

It appears that the proposition is known as true, without the complete explanation of the why and how: that as a necessity something has to be [even without the part that because nothing cannot be].

There seems to be something else that cannot be, aside from absolute vacuity, which is absolute solidity, and perhaps it is that this ‘infinity’ is the true opposite of ‘zero’, not ‘something’; thus making ‘something’ to be the finite in-between mid-point of the two impossible absolutes. Yet, how come? Is it that ‘causeless’ is the actual TOE, that there can be no why or complete how because it is causeless?

Is this a neutral position of unity (no ‘one’ way, but all and none) because no distinctions can really be made, or is it paradoxical—that the All is unreasonable?

Yet one truth remains: there must be something; it is not optional.
 
Dywyddyr said:
Pardon?
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You're saying that something can arise from nothing. That completely contradicts the law of cause and effect.


Dywyddyr said:
In this way:

It presupposes that:
A) god exists.
B) he created time and everything else.
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Mind you that my question is completely hypothetical, as is with ANY question relating to the origin of the universe. There's no way to solve a problem by asking a question with no presupposition like "What created everything?"
 
thewiseOne said:
You're saying that something can arise from nothing. That completely contradicts the law of cause and effect.
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1) read the link in post #2.
2) read spidergoat's post.

Mind you that my question is completely hypothetical, as is with ANY question relating to the origin of the universe. There's no way to solve a problem by asking a question with no presupposition like "What created everything?"
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What created the universe?

Read the link in post #2 for one possible answer.
No pre-supposition there. No god required.
 
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