The existence of God

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
And top it all of you are going to continue dodging my question.

And what's worse for you is I'm openly doing so and confident that not one person, other than you, will call me on it.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
And top it all of you are going to continue dodging my question.

If you're going to complain about question dodging you had better get on with it and work out an answer to my earlier question. What reason do you have for thinking that the universe necessarily cannot be infinitely old?

Originally posted by DeepThought
If you're going to complain about question dodging you had better get on with it and work out an answer to my earlier question. What reason do you have for thinking that the universe necessarily cannot be infinitely old?

Everything winds down

Originally posted by KellyJay
Everything winds down

Including God?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Including God?

Everything that's not eternal in nature (so it excludes God). Did the universe exist prior to the Big Bang?

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
The cake that I baked was caused by me mixing the ingredients and putting it into the oven.

Was it half baked?

Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
Was it half baked?

Nope

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
[b]Everything that's not eternal in nature (so it excludes God).

So not everything then.

Did the universe exist prior to the Big Bang?
You just can't help tagging stupid questions on to every post can you?

Originally posted by twhitehead
So not everything then.

[b]Did the universe exist prior to the Big Bang?
You just can't help tagging stupid questions on to every post can you?[/b]

Everything apart from God.

If you believe the universe existed as 'nothing' just say so. A universe so infinitely small that it was in fact 'nothing'.

By the way, just saying a question is stupid and not answering it kind of looks stupid as well.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Everything apart from God.

And angels and all the other eternal stuff. I am fairly sure that mathematics doesn't wind down.

If you believe the universe existed as 'nothing' just say so.
Why should I say so? You would ignore the response and ask the same stupid question again tomorrow.

By the way, just saying a question is stupid and not answering it kind of looks stupid as well.
Only to you. But who cares what you think it looks like? It was a stupid question because you know the answer already and asking the question didn't help your argument, you only asked it because that is all you do, keep on asking question after question, never ever admitting that you are flat out wrong about just about everything.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Everything that's not eternal in nature (so it excludes God). Did the universe exist prior to the Big Bang?

If the universe is infinitely old then it is eternal in nature. Now, what is your reason for thinking that the universe is not infinitely old?

Originally posted by DeepThought
If the universe is infinitely old then it is eternal in nature. Now, what is your reason for thinking that the universe is not infinitely old?

Stephen Hawking thinks so.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

"All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ..."

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Stephen Hawking thinks so.

http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

"All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ..."

Copy and paste of my answer to the identical question in the other thread:

Stephen Hawking presents an entropy argument. Essentially entropy always increases and it's possible to show that it has a maximum - subject to some assumptions about the system being closed. However, there is a way round this. In models of eternal inflation, where the universe undergoes periodic eras of incredibly rapid expansion, the entropy density is returned to zero by the immensely fast expansion. So I don't think that he's covered all bases. In the article he mentions that the universe has a start is the simplest assumption, so he is applying Occam's razor. I tend to regard the question as open.

Anyway, what I was hoping for was that you would present some argument so that I could say: "And why does this not apply to God?". I don't think an entropy argument will work in the case of God, since God is not bound by the rules of the universe. A potentially bigger problem is the argument I presented earlier. To get from the end of the inflationary era to now requires 10 billion years to have elapsed. But If the universe is infinitely old then to get from a time infinitely far in the past to now requires an infinite amount of time to have elapsed, which means that the current era can't be reached. I'm in two minds as to whether the argument works or not, but it does seem to apply to God as well.

What I'm getting at overall is that if you base your ontological argument on the necessity of prior cause then you have the problem that the difficulty with the necessity of prior cause seems to apply to God as well. You can insist that God does not require prior cause, but if that is the case then it is hard to see why it should apply to the universe.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Everything winds down

This is essentially an entropy based argument, so see the post immediately above this one.

Originally posted by DeepThought
But If the universe is infinitely old then to get from a time infinitely far in the past to now requires an infinite amount of time to have elapsed, which means that the current era can't be reached. I'm in two minds as to whether the argument works or not,

I have seen that one before, and the argument does not work. It is based on an uncomfortableness with infinity and is in some ways related to the Achilles and the tortoise paradox.