the premise “everything that begins to exist has a cause” is often used in cult arguments for the existence of god.
but nevermind about that.
its supposed to be intuitively obvious…
after all, what can you think of that didn’t have a cause of its existence?
to apply it to the ‘universe’ it requires that you treat the as a ‘thing’ …because the premise is essentially “every ‘thing’ that begins to exist has a cause”
logically speaking (i think), the universe is the set of all things. and a set cannot be a member of itself. barker uses the example that all members of an orchestra play in harmony, but not all orchestras play in harmony with each other.
not sure if i understand exactly what your talking about,but i was going through wastly muddleing threads in the religion sub forum. you guys always find a complicated way to say everything.what i read has some relavence to this topic. ether 1)the universe created itself 2)it was spontaniusly created by something or nothing 3)it was created by god.
you belive that all things had to be created to exist. but the 1 exeption in our enigma is:nothing created god. he always existed. thats what the bible says. it is quite easy to simplify it down to this. not too many fancy words. did i leave anything out?
I understand clearly what you are saying. I’ll give you that it appears to be a rather sound argument against the “everything has a cause” argument. But remember that it is still just a theory. I personally do not find it much more convincing that the “everything cannot come from nothing argument”. Both arguments assume thier own pressupositions.
Why does the argument need to be applied to the Universe in the first place? Isn’t it enough to say “Everything in the Universe” or “Everything we know of in Nature” or something similar?
The apriori assumption of a causal universe is well explored, and one can construct any philosophy one chooses from that assumption, but it can also be that the universe isn’t causal, or that causal relationships can only be inferred and not known.
The arguments over real and apparent go on forever, and of course, that is no small part of why we are here.
