Closing the Gap from "First Cause" to "God"

[bridgeforsale]

But which premise is question-begging? It seems to me that I’ve at least offered some kind of argumentation, rather than mere assertion, for each of the premises.

I’m just letting you know that I’m not ignoring this aspect of the discussion. The problem of evil is something we may need to come back to later. For now, I’m only arguing that an omnipotent being exists. Its goodness is something that will have to be examined later.

I combined these two points for the sake of relevancy (and to avoid redundancy on my part). I don’t think my arguments can be fairly viewed as a bare assertion, since I do provide reasoning. The crux of my argument is based on inferences and probabilities we can draw from the relevant cosmological and evolutionary evidence.God has never created ex nihilo, and always utilizes a staged process. I believe this tells us something about god. For one it tells us how he prefers to build things. However, if we assume god has immense intelligence, which I think is a “necessary” assumption, then it’s rational to assume he does things using the most efficient means he has at his disposal.

It doesn’t make sense to assume god possesses the ability to create ex nihilo given these facts. Moreover, assuming god is not omnipotent corresponds with every other relevant observation we can make. For example, an argument Dawkins like to use against the existence of god is a simple and effective one, if you assume god is omnipotent. Dawkins notes that there hasn’t been a single recorded instance of a miracle claim involving something like an amputee spontaneously regrowing his limb after a visit to Lourdes, or after his friends and family appealed to god on his behalf; whereas there’s numerous claims of miracle healings involving diseases that could have healed on their own (even if the chances were low).

We can either think god is purposely hiding from us, god hates amputees, or the more logical conclusion, god lacks the ability to cause the spontaneous regrowth of limbs.

The major difference between the two arguments is that the TCA allows for an eternal universe. The reason I like the TCA so much is that many skeptics are sympathetic to an eternal universe and, while I disagree with such a concept, the TCA allows us to grant that assumption and still come to the conclusion that a First Cause exists.

I agree TCA is a better argument (it has more logical integrity simply because it doesn’t overreach as the others do).