1 Doesn't all this scientific evidence point even more to the necessity for an uncaused cause? I mean the more we find out about the universe the more solid arguments like the Aquinas' cosmological argument and other cosmological arguments of our time become for the existence of at least some kind of deity.

I like this cosmological argument blog below from a MySpace friend of mine. I think it's worth a read anyway if you are interested in why some of us 'theists' can justify our freethinking minds through straight logic and reason for at least the existence of some kind of uncaused cause.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=2755802&blogID=100680652

Would love to hear your thoughts on it anyway, here or on the above blog.

Cheers
Jad

2 Aquinas' argument fails because you replace the universe as the uncaused cause with god as an uncaused cause. Why can god exist outside of time, but the universe can not? We know the universe does exist. If the best proof that god exists is that we think the universe didn't exist at some point (we have no evidence for that), that's a pretty weak argument.

The universe has no possibility of not existing. The universe is "god". Not a sentient personal god, but an entity that always exists.

3

Hi there,

God created time, therefore He is not bound by it. The universe on the other hand is bound by time. Everything we've learnt in science so far keeps pointing ever so strongly to the fact that yes indeed the universe has not always been here. It is very muchly finite and the further we study the natural sciences the more and more finite we realise it is.

The article in the link provided by plumpis in the first post points ever so strongly to a finite universe. The only suggestion of an infinite universe in the article is a suggested model which is outside the observable universe, which makes it outside observable science. What this means is there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever for an infinite universe and there never has been. The Aquinas argument and the other cosmological argument I provided a link for uses empirical evidence from observable science as part of it's premise to conclude the necessity for an uncaused cause. If you would like to argue the latter for instance then I suggest you read it because it in no way replaces the universe as the uncaused cause with god as an uncaused cause.

If one wanted to base their atheism on the belief that the universe is infinite because of apparent 'evidence' that comes only from outside the observable universe and therefore outside the natural sciences it would take more faith to believe in atheism then it would Christianity.

4 If one were to argue that "God exists and is outside of time. This is proved because he made the universe" then nothing has been proved. The conclusion (God is eternal) is being 'proven' by the assumptions of the premise (God created the universe, and must have been somewhere before it was here). Because the premise contains the conclusion, the only demonstrable connection is the one between the arguer's words and personal belief.


Now, there are exactly three possibilities of cosmology:
1) Mass-energy didn't exist once, and still don't.
2) Mass-energy used to exist but don't anymore.
3) Mass-energy didn't exist once, but does now.
4) Mass-energy existed very long ago, and still does.

1 and 2 are a matter for abstract philosophy, as it is apparent that mass and energy exist now.
3 requires the creation of all things ex nihilio. This may be possible but there is no reason to assume that it is what happened. There is absolutely no evidence showing that mass and energy 'began' in the earliest moments or before the big bang, and all the evidence in the universe indicates that mass-energy cannot come from nothing.
4 is the only feasible option. The only objection is the mental barrier that makes it a little tricky to accept that mass-energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Think about a car made by General Motors. The bumper on the car came from car parts in a warehouse. The bumper was made from metal mined in Arizona, and the metal in Arizona came from the accretion disk which collected to form the Earth a few billion years ago in the birth of the solar system. The metal in the accretion disk came from the shell around a nova, where it was fused from hydrogen or helium into the heavier elements. That helium came from hydrogen in that star's core. All of this can be plainly seen to be speeding away from all other stars, and can be traced back to a given point in space and the past. That hydrogen came from loose protons and neutrons, which came from quarks and energy, rapidly expanding in what we call the big bang.

When General Motors stamps GMC on the bumper, they did not create the bumper any more than the Sun creates light. They've simply altered mass-energy into a different form. There is no reason to state that "All things must have a beginning." The next objection to an eternal universe is also philosophical: "If the universe has an infinite past then there is an unlimited series of events between The Beginning and now! That means that today will never happen!" While it's difficult to think about an equivalent 'infinity-outside-experience,' let's look at one where infinity is contained in everyday action.

Greek philosophers were amazed at an arrow's flight. Unaware of properties such as inertia and momentum, they pondered which god guided the arrow to its target. Clearly it couldn't travel on its own! For before it could get to the rabbit, it would have to travel half that distance. Before half, it must reach one fourth the distance. Before one fourth, one eighth. Clearly a journey with an infinite number of waypoints can never end! Similarly, walking a mile takes me about twenty minutes. While I suppose I could define this walk as (1/2+1/4+1/8+1/16+1/32+1/64+1/128...1/infinity) mile, it makes no difference in how long it takes to travel that far. So an infinity contained within a finite distance makes no difference to that distance.

Now, a finite value within an infinite one is a little harder to visualize. 'Pi' is an infinitely long decimal. Somewhere within it is every possible sequence of numbers. There will be nine billion nines in a row. Your phone number is there. Now, somewhere in Pi there is this series of numbers: 11111111111112847593749437498879000
How far is the '9000' from the ones? It's a very specific distance, right? Even though pi itself is infinite? If mass-energy didn't come from nothing, as seems to be the case, then it has always been around. 'Time' in that sense is more of a difference between two points than an absolute.