Christians often claim that God created everything. If so, then either God created himself or God isn’t a thing.
I see that you’ve critiqued an account of how everything came into existence and found it to be inadequate.
Do you have another account that you’d like to advance in it’s place?
No. I merely find the explanation that a god caused everything to come into existence to be woefully inadequate.
Christians claim that God created himself? I find that surprising.
Don’t they, in fact, say that God always existed and He created the universe as we know it?
I don’t find this argument very appealing. To me at least it’s pretty obvious that it’s meant everything except himself as one can’t create himself. But I do agree that therefore in that instance saying that he created “everything” is false and should not be done to prevent misunderstandings.
Also, I think you might want to do some research on the original cosmological argument and the Kalam version of it, I think that’s what you’re after here.
And mr reasonable, I hope you aren’t attempting to make an argument from ignorance. It doesn’t make people look very bright.
But you don’t offer a more serviceable theory? How intellectually lazy of you. I’m am very disappointed.
I’m not. I’m just asking how this criticism is unique to any particular account of how the problem of first cause might be resolved.
Their paramount claim is typically that God created everything. And it follows unless God isn’t a thing, then God must have created himself.
Fine, be disappointed.
But just to make you happy, I’ll offer a more serviceable theory.
The world and/or universe came into existence via a means other than a god creating it.
Why does there have to be a first cause?
You seemed like you thought it was important, because you made a thread about it. I mean, “created everything” is in the title. I figured this was a thread relating to how everything was created. So I clicked it. Then I read your explanation of how god didn’t create everything and I thought, “hmm, this is a nice bit of reasoning here, and it’s persuasive, but as a critical thinking guy, I have to pose the question, “what kind of explanation would be most suitable then?”” and I think you guys kinda left off there. I don’t know if it’s important to know from where anything or everything came, but I just thought that’s what this thread was about.
So you really aren’t interested in the question of how everything got here? I don’t think it’s important to look at it in the sense of trying to answer it one way or another, but instead like, “why is this a question, and what is the function of asking it?”.
You don’t think it’s interesting to try and envision nothing, and then something out of apparently nowhere and then try and understand how one might even go about thinking these kinds of things?
Personally, I don’t care at all how everything got here. Nor do I think I’ll ever know. But when people who have far less knowledge about the cosmos, science and the origin of the universe than typical scientists do are making solid claims about the origin of the universe, it most certainly raises eyebrows.
You mean that scientists are the only ones who know about the origin of the universe? And they can’t be mistaken?
I don’t think scientists actually know about the origin of the universe. But they are certainly more qualified to make an educated guess than the typical churchgoer is.
What makes them more qualified?
If the universe was created by a supernatural spirit and scientists deny the existence ofsuch spirits, then scientists are less qualified to comment on the origin of the universe.
What do you think would make a person more qualified than someone else with respect to being able to make an educated guess about the origin of the universe?
I asked you first. Do you know what might make a scientist more qualified?
Scientists study things like this for a living, using an unbiased approach. The typical churchgoers tend to be those who have failed a gullibility test, have nothing solid to base their claims on and are very biased.
Now you answer my question: What do you think would make a person more qualified than someone else with respect to being able to make an educated guess about the origin of the universe?
A scientist is trained to critically examine evidence so that would make him/her more qualified. On the other hand, a scientist works with a specific model of the universe which makes him/her biased and prone to reject explanations which are outside of that model.
Why would a scientist reject an explanation that is possible?