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CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 3:22 am
by Metacrock
1. Something exists.
2. Whatever exists exists either necessarily or contingently.
3. It is impossible that only contingent things exist.
4. Therefore, there exists at least one necessary thing.
5. If there is a necessary thing, that thing is appropriately called 'God.'
6. Therefore God exists.

I revised it





Atheists, (motions with hand to say "come on" martial arts style)

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 1:11 pm
by met
Well, 4 only gets you some kind of "unmoved mover"? How do you go from there - even granting the validity of 3 - to a personal type of "God"?

....I think that's the difficult question with a CA ..... :ugeek:

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:49 pm
by Jim B.
Right, it has problems getting you to a personal God, but I wonder if it gets you to a God at all. "Being has to be" as we always used to say. And if God isn't necessarily the same thing as being (see the thread on your blog about God transcending being to account for things like creation, freedom, becoming and all that) then , well there you go... :)

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 12:40 pm
by met
I think it's the significance of the changing configurations of "being" (ie reductively "of stuff") that's the question. If becoming is not essentially just "being different" but more like (as it intuitively seems to us) "becoming something" then there's reasons To think in terms of a personal God.

If otoh "stuff" just whirls around and occasionally becomes seemingly-organized, then maybe not (or not exactly "God" as that's understood in monotheistic traditions at least)... :?

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 7:36 am
by Metacrock
God argumemt doesn't have to prove what religion you should belong to. warranting belief in general idea of God is good enough. But here;s a way some do it:


This version understands Necessity and contingency largely in causal terms. The necessity that creates the universe must be understood as eternal and uncaused for two reasons: (1) The impossibility of ICR[1], there has to be a final cause or nothing would ever come to be, (2) empirically we know the universe is not eternal. See the supporting material. Atheists will often argue that this kind of argument doesn't prove that God is the necessity that causes the universe. but being necessary and creator and primary cause makes it the sources of all things we can rationally construe that as God.

Finally, even if the cosmological argument is sound or cogent, the difficult task remains to show, as part of natural theology, that the necessary being to which the cosmological argument concludes is the God of religion, and if so, of which religion. Rowe suggests that the cosmological argument has two parts, one to establish the existence of a first cause or necessary being, the other that this necessary being is God (1975: 6). It is unclear, however, whether the second contention is an essential part of the cosmological argument. Although Aquinas was quick to make the identification between God and the first mover or first cause, such identification seems to go beyond the causal reasoning that informs the argument (although one can argue that it is consistent with the larger picture of God and his properties that Aquinas paints in his Summae). Some (Rasmussen, O’Connor, Koons) have plowed ahead in developing this stage 2 process by showing how and what properties—simplicity, unity, omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, and so on—might follow from the concept of a necessary being. It “has implications that bring it into the neighborhood of God as traditionally conceived” (O’Connor 2008: 67).[2]
There's a problem in speaking of God as "a being" since it threatens to reduce God from infinite and omnipresent to a localized entity. This is a semantic problem and we can resole it by through understanding that God is the eternal necessary aspect of being. Being is a thing and God is "that thing" which is unbounded,eternal, and necessary aspect of being. This unbounded condition is implied by the nature of cosmological necessity. The eternal causal agent that gives rise to all existing things could not be itself caused since that would just create the necessity of another explanation (it would mean that thing is not the ultimate cause but is just another contingent thing). Being eternal and necessary means the ground of being. The contrast between human finitude and the infinite evokes the senses of the numinous or mystical experience which is the basisof all religion.[3]

Of course we understand this eternal necessary aspect of being to be God not only because the infinite evokes the numinous but also because the notion that God is being itself is a major aspect of Christian Theology.[4]




Notes

[1] Infinite Causal Regression. For arguments against see: No Infinite Causal Regression (link)

[2] Timothy O’Connor2008, Theism and Ultimate Explanation: the Necessary Shape of Contingency, London: Wiley-Blackwell.

[3] David Steindl-Rast,OSB, "The Mystical Core of Organized religion," Greatfulness, blog, 2018
https://gratefulness.org/resource/dsr-m ... -religion/

[4] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church NY: Penguin,1964.65

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 7:38 am
by Metacrock
met wrote:
Sat Sep 08, 2018 12:40 pm
I think it's the significance of the changing configurations of "being" (ie reductively "of stuff") that's the question. If becoming is not essentially just "being different" but more like (as it intuitively seems to us) "becoming something" then there's reasons To think in terms of a personal God.

If otoh "stuff" just whirls around and occasionally becomes seemingly-organized, then maybe not (or not exactly "God" as that's understood in monotheistic traditions at least)... :?
For contingencies , that is all things (not God) it;s coming to be.

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 7:45 am
by Metacrock
Jim B. wrote:
Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:49 pm
Right, it has problems getting you to a personal God, but I wonder if it gets you to a God at all. "Being has to be" as we always used to say. And if God isn't necessarily the same thing as being (see the thread on your blog about God transcending being to account for things like creation, freedom, becoming and all that) then , well there you go... :)
Ray began that phrase he used it in arguing for God as being itself. Being itself means the depth of being. You can't get a more depth than the basis of all continent things, Tillich says that is the meaning of the word God, That;s the basis of the concept.

Then there's an argument about human infinitude is contrasted with the infinite nature of being itself and that evokes the sense o the sinuous thus making the depth and ground of being a valid object of religiosity devotion whch means God.

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:47 am
by met
So does it all come down to "being having depth" or not - as Tillich says?

I think the whole concept of causality depends on the significance of what is "caused" and perhaps we can imagine a whirling something, like a multiverse, that simply tries out all the possibilities without intention. That doesn't seem a "cause" in the same sense as the other.

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 1:52 pm
by Jim B.
Metacrock wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 7:45 am
Jim B. wrote:
Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:49 pm
Right, it has problems getting you to a personal God, but I wonder if it gets you to a God at all. "Being has to be" as we always used to say. And if God isn't necessarily the same thing as being (see the thread on your blog about God transcending being to account for things like creation, freedom, becoming and all that) then , well there you go... :)
Ray began that phrase he used it in arguing for God as being itself. Being itself means the depth of being. You can't get a more depth than the basis of all continent things, Tillich says that is the meaning of the word God, That;s the basis of the concept.

Then there's an argument about human infinitude is contrasted with the infinite nature of being itself and that evokes the sense o the sinuous thus making the depth and ground of being a valid object of religiosity devotion whch means God.
It all comes down to whether or not God is being itself. As I argued on the thread on your blog, I think it makes more sense to think of God as Plotinus did as beyond being. That way, the world as it is makes more sense. If God is beyond being, then being would have its own autonomous (more or less) depth, and 'reason to be". Its own "abysmal power" although not unrelated to God would not be God itself. God would have to encompass the "abysm itself" :)

Re: CA: Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:24 pm
by Metacrock
Jim B. wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 1:52 pm
Metacrock wrote:
Mon Sep 10, 2018 7:45 am
Jim B. wrote:
Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:49 pm
Right, it has problems getting you to a personal God, but I wonder if it gets you to a God at all. "Being has to be" as we always used to say. And if God isn't necessarily the same thing as being (see the thread on your blog about God transcending being to account for things like creation, freedom, becoming and all that) then , well there you go... :)
Ray began that phrase he used it in arguing for God as being itself. Being itself means the depth of being. You can't get a more depth than the basis of all continent things, Tillich says that is the meaning of the word God, That;s the basis of the concept.

Then there's an argument about human infinitude is contrasted with the infinite nature of being itself and that evokes the sense o the sinuous thus making the depth and ground of being a valid object of religiosity devotion whch means God.
It all comes down to whether or not God is being itself. As I argued on the thread on your blog, I think it makes more sense to think of God as Plotinus did as beyond being. That way, the world as it is makes more sense. If God is beyond being, then being would have its own autonomous (more or less) depth, and 'reason to be". Its own "abysmal power" although not unrelated to God would not be God itself. God would have to encompass the "abysm itself" :)
beyond being is a contradiction in terms, That's Ike saying its beyond being real.