Finite past proves God exists

[lindaharry]

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linda

 

[inocente]

I have pointed out at least a dozen times on these forums that the Big Bang could have been the explosion of something pre-existing, what, we can’t know. And that pre-existing thing may have been preceded by something else. And so on through a thousand cycles ir you want.
But every such thing, universe, whatever-you-want-to-call-it existed a finite time ago. There could not have been anything that existed an infinite time ago.

Lemaître pointed out that the big bang could represent the physical clock being reset to zero. Therefore we cannot say that a previous universe “existed a finite time ago” because that universe didn’t exist in our time. Trying to add up the separate times would be like trying to add up the combined amount of space in all of them, meaningless. Time only has meaning within our universe, there’s not even any reason why time has to exist at all in any other.

Or, put another way, suppose our universe goes through cycles of big bang and big crunch, each resetting the physical clock, there’s no reason I can think of why that couldn’t be an eternal stream.

But if you’re determined to prove that one of the most famous Catholics of the last century was dead wrong then by all means, although I have a feeling about who might win.

Therefore, God who lives in eternity started it all.

No, Thor, who lives in eternity started it all. Or, a high-class invisible pink unicorn started it all. Prove me wrong.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The bottom line is that while we can prove a Big Bang, we cannot prove a Big Crunch, nor an endless cycle of same. One can suppose a Big Crunch, if one cannot stand the idea of God.

One can just as easily suppose a Big God who really did say “Let there be light!” Because there really was light before anything else.

 

[empther]

This seems to be the connection that needs to be made. If we accept that something could not have existed an infinitely long time ago, WHY does that mean that a God must have started it?*

As far as I can see if we use that starting point then all we can logically deduce is that there must have been one or more prime movers at the start of the sequence at some finite time in the past. Of course it’s possible that PM (or PM’s) were sentient being(s), or they could have been something else entirely (ie chance as suggested by TheTrueCentrist).

If you can get from your starting point to your conclusion then by all means, please demonstrate.*

By God we mean an infinite being, who is eternal, who is the Necessary Being, who is omnipetent, who is omniscient, and so on, all of which is necessary for God to be God because he is surpremely one, and simple having no composition, because everything that we can say about God is one thing in him.
.
Anything else , no matter what you want to think it is, would not be God but part of the universe, a natural thing limited in size and power by its composition, not infinite, not eternal, not omnipotent, not omniscient, not necessary, and so on,
and therefore he/she/it/them/whatever could not be the prime mover or first creator, but would have to be created by something else. but then it wouldn’t have existed from the infinite past. .

I’m sorry if I can’t be clearer than that, but many ideas have to be juggled in the mind at once to see the big picture.
When you look at a car, you know it has pistons and cylinders and a drive train, and ignition switch, and gas tank and so on and so on. You don’t have to think of all these things when you look at a car because you’ve learned about all the car’s components and they are all incorporated in your idea of “car”. “Car” is the big picture.
It’s the same with these matters we’re dealing with.

 

[empther]

Or, put another way, suppose our universe goes through cycles of big bang and big crunch, each resetting the physical clock, what’s that? ] there’s no reason I can think of why that couldn’t be an eternal stream.

Don’t these cycles follow one after the other? Then each cycle happened a finite time ago.

There is no suspension of time, gaps in time between cycles, unless absolutetly everything is annihilated in between cycles, but then you have a problem of how to start the next cycle.
Nor does having cycles mean there could be infinite cycles since anything that can be counted can’t be infinite.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

By God we mean an infinite being, who is eternal, who is the Necessary Being, who is omnipetent, who is omniscient, and so on, all of which is necessary for God to be God because he is surpremely one, and simple having no composition, because everything that we can say about God is one thing in him.

This is quite a jump without further information on how one would arrive at this collection of attributes. My question is similar to the one posted by Candide West. If we establish that there must have been a prime mover, how do we progress from that to knowing that this prime mover is omnipotent, omniscient, and so on…

.

Anything else, no matter what you want to think it is, would not be God but part of the universe, a natural thing limited in size and power by its composition, not infinite, not eternal, not omnipotent, not omniscient, not necessary, and so on, and therefore he/she/it/them/whatever could not be the prime mover or first creator, but would have to be created by something else. but then it wouldn’t have existed from the infinite past.

Some of the other creation stories do contain gods that had come about because of other gods without going into an infinite pass. Such as the Enûma Eliš in which Apsû and Tiamat were the original eternal gods and they created lesser gods who created lesser gods until man was created by the lowest gods in this hierarchy over 6 epochs.

When you look at a car, you know it has pistons and cylinders and a drive train, and ignition switch, and gas tank and so on and so on.

When one looks at a car they may be inclined to believe that it conforms to design patterns that have been presented before. (note: not all cars use gas, have gas tanks, pistons, and cylinders, and so on and at first glance of these type of vehicles if you are not familiar with them you’d have no way of knowing this).

You don’t have to think of all these things when you look at a car because you’ve learned about all the car’s components…

Though not thinking about it could sometimes lead to a false conclusion. Ex: A Tesla Roadster is a car that does not have all of the components your described above. Instead of relying on previously held conclusions we want to investigate available information and the connections between the information.

and they are all incorporated in your idea of “car”. “Car” is the big picture.

BTW: I think you are trying to discuss the concept of abstraction. Where “car” is an abstraction whose referent can be one of many powered wheeled ground transports.

It’s the same with these matters we’re dealing with.

I think I may be missing a connection here. Not quite sure how the car analogy is similar to trying to making a connection between a finite past and a being of the attributes that you listed.

 

[Candide_West]

By God we mean an infinite being, who is eternal, who is the Necessary Being, who is omnipetent, who is omniscient, and so on, all of which is necessary for God to be God because he is surpremely one, and simple having no composition, because everything that we can say about God is one thing in him.

Ok, this appears to comply with the traditional Catholic view of God, I’m reasonably familiar with this.

Anything else , no matter what you want to think it is, would not be God but part of the universe, a natural thing limited in size and power by its composition, not infinite, not eternal, not omnipotent, not omniscient, not necessary, and so on, and therefore he/she/it/them/whatever could not be the prime mover or first creator, but would have to be created by something else. but then it wouldn’t have existed from the infinite past.

Ok, I think we have progress here.

So now the obvious question is, “why must absolutely anything else be a part of the universe”. I guess that is the challenge before you really, to support the assertion that “In order to be a / the prime mover (PM) x must be an omniscient, omnipotent, eternal sentient being.”

As far as I can see you can do this either by showing that a / the PM must have these qualities, or that anything which didn’t have these qualities (for example something that wasn’t a sentient being) couldn’t possibly be a / the PM.

I’m sorry if I can’t be clearer than that, but many ideas have to be juggled in the mind at once to see the big picture.
When you look at a car, you know it has pistons and cylinders and a drive train, and ignition switch, and gas tank and so on and so on. You don’t have to think of all these things when you look at a car because you’ve learned about all the car’s components and they are all incorporated in your idea of “car”. “Car” is the big picture.
It’s the same with these matters we’re dealing with.

Yes, I understand that these attributes (omnipotence etc) are all included by shorthand in the term “God” in Catholic terminology.

 

[empther]

Hello!
Enterprise calling Earth.
Is anybody down there?
Any Catholics around here?
Any believers of any kind?
How come we don’t hear from you?

A year or so ago, I temporarily joined a Jewish forum to talk about a situation in my novel. Due to events too complicated to explain here, the situation was that Israel was faced with invasion and total extermination. “Empress Theresa” helped them evacuate to a new land where they would be safe forever.
The response I got was all negative. I was called “anti-Semite”, “whore”, and "Nazi’.

There were about twelve of them, but the board is very large. They claim the most users on line at one time was 5,058. By contrast, for catholic.com forum:** Most users ever online was 2104, Feb 22, '12 at 11:47 am.**
My thread had four thousand views in the first two weeks. But only twelve people ever contributed a post. What did all the rest think? We didn’t hear from those who would take the opposite side, with respect to the advisability of fleeing to a safe place. (* although millions of Jews live in the United States and elsewhere, not Israel including apparently nearly all the members on that forum * ) That position wouldn’t be popular there. The twelve name callers had jumped in first and took over the place. Not a single member on that huge forum had a good word for me.***

People don’t want to take the heat.

---

*** One member did give my idea support, but she contacted me through email, not the forum.

 

[inocente]

Don’t these cycles follow one after the other? Then each cycle happened a finite time ago.

Nope, you’re about 105 years behind in your physics.

Lemaître discovered the possibility of the big bang when working through the implications of the math in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Space and time exist only within the universe, they’re meaningless otherwise. Even then the theory points out that the order of events depends on the observer (see “relativity of simultaneity” on Wikipedia).

*There is no suspension of time, gaps in time between cycles, unless absolutetly everything is annihilated in between cycles, but then you have a problem of how to start the next cycle. *

Everything would have to be annihilated (that’s what I mean by resetting the physical clock), otherwise we could find evidence for a previous incarnation.

There is no time “between cycles”, space-time only exists within our universe. Einstein again.

Nor does having cycles mean there could be infinite cycles since anything that can be counted can’t be infinite.

On a science forum you’d probably be asked to start a new thread for that idea, since if you discard time then you’re acknowledging that your OP hypothesis has failed. But to save doing that, how would you count these cycles? How can you even know they are countable?

 

[empther]

Quote:
*There is no suspension of time, gaps in time between cycles, unless absolutetly everything is annihilated in between cycles, but then you have a problem of how to start the next cycle. *

Everything would have to be annihilated (that’s what I mean by resetting the physical clock), otherwise we could find evidence for a previous incarnation.

When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other, but there’s not absolutely nothing left. They’re converted to energy.

I said unless absolutetly everything is annihilated in between cycles
which means the energy too. **Nothing **left. But this is impossible except for God.

 

[inocente]

I said unless absolutetly everything is annihilated in between cycles
which means the energy too. **Nothing **left. But this is impossible except for God.

Could not be more wrong. The total energy of the universe is zero. Always has been. Always will be. Zero. Zip. Nothing.

I’ve not got the time to teach you cosmology 101. I hear Lawrence Krauss’s book is a good intro. Here’s an excerpt which refers to Lemaître, you’d have to get the book for the whole story.

A Universe from Nothing: Einstein, the Belgian Priest and the Puzzle of the Big Bang - scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=universe-from-nothing

 

[empther]

Quote:
Originally Posted by empther

forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif
I said unless absolutetly everything is annihilated in between cycles
*which means the energy too. **Nothing ***left. But this is impossible except for God.

Could not be more wrong. The total energy of the universe is zero. Always has been. Always will be. Zero. Zip. Nothing.

I see.
So there’s nothing, hunh? I can’t wait to see the evening news.

 

[JDaniel]

This seems to be the connection that needs to be made. If we accept that something could not have existed an infinitely long time ago, WHY does that mean that a God must have started it?*

As far as I can see if we use that starting point then all we can logically deduce is that there must have been one or more prime movers at the start of the sequence at some finite time in the past. Of course it’s possible that PM (or PM’s) were sentient being(s), or they could have been something else entirely (ie chance as suggested by TheTrueCentrist).

If you can get from your starting point to your conclusion then by all means, please demonstrate.*

Candide:

For the past few hours, I’ve read this thread with great interest. Since I began reading it today, I have not been around to make any earlier reply. I would like to ask a question of you:

OK: let us postulate the existence of your PM, i.e., your Prime Mover concept. After a full and careful consideration of the meaning of “prime mover,” would you envision your “PM” to be infinite?

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

Could not be more wrong. The total energy of the universe is zero. Always has been. Always will be. Zero. Zip. Nothing.

So, let me get this straight: does the total energy of the universe have to do with whether or not energy exists? Or does it have to do with “equilibrium?”

God bless,
jd

 

[empther]

JDaniel,

If Candide says her “PM” is infinite she goes against Aquinas who said God is infinite because he is his own existence, and nothing else but God could be intinite because anything else would be limited by its own “potentiality”, that is, its ability to change, which cannot be the feature of an infinite thing.

ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP/FP007.html#FPQ7A1THEP1

And in question 25: THE POWER OF GOD (SIX ARTICLES)
Article 2: Whether His power is infinite?

Reply to Objection 2, Aquinas says:

The power of a univocal agent is wholly manifested in its effect. The generative power of man, for example, is not able to do more than beget man. But the power of a non-univocal agent does not wholly manifest itself in the production of its effect: as, for example, the power of the sun does not wholly manifest itself in the production of an animal generated from putrefaction. Now it is clear that God is not a univocal agent. For nothing agrees with Him either in species or in genus, as was shown above ([3], [5]; [4], [3]). Whence it follows that His effect is always less than His power. It is not necessary, therefore, that the infinite power of God should be manifested so as to produce an infinite effect. Yet even if it were to produce no effect, the power of God would not be ineffectual; because a thing is ineffectual which is ordained towards an end to which it does not attain. But the power of God is not ordered toward its effect as towards an end; rather, it is the end of the effect produced by it.

Where “univocal” means one meaning only. So in the natural world any thing only has the power to generate something similar to itself.

So Candice’s “PM” if it is not God could only generate something similar to itself, which clearly is not the universe we see since it can’t create something from nothing.

But if God is inifite his power is also infinite, allowing him to create the universe from nothing.

 

[ASimon]

So, let me get this straight: does the total energy of the universe have to do with whether or not energy exists? Or does it have to do with “equilibrium?”

God bless,
jd

Equilibrium - there’s positive energy and negative energy, the net sum of which is 0.

 

[empther]

Equilibrium - there’s positive energy and negative energy, the net sum of which is 0.

Well I can understand that positive charges of protons and negative charges of electrons ( vice versa in antimatter ) balance each other off so there is a net zero, in a sense, ( although don’t tell that to an individual proton or electron )
but there is still matter.

I’d like to know what “negative energy” is. Is it “un-energy”? Deficit energy? I.O.U. energy? Seems like if the positive energy of something decreases, the decrease will stop decreasing at zero.

---

This is the problem with people who want one minute explanations of complex issues, which college students would find difficult to understand after a semester’s course. It’s like trying to teach the wild man from Bornea how a car works in one afternoon and then hiring him as a mechanic in a Ferrari dealership.

 

[Candide_West]

Candide:

For the past few hours, I’ve read this thread with great interest. Since I began reading it today, I have not been around to make any earlier reply. I would like to ask a question of you:

OK: let us postulate the existence of your PM, i.e., your Prime Mover concept. After a full and careful consideration of the meaning of “prime mover,” would you envision your “PM” to be infinite?

God bless,
jd

Hi JD,

Well, short answer would be “maybe”.

To explain - I don’t really have a concept of a particular something as a prime mover. My point to Empther was that in order to use a finite past as proof of the existence of a omnipotent, omniscient, eternal being, he / she will need to show that ONLY anomnipotent, omniscient, eternal being could be the prime mover.

If that cannot be shown then suggestions like the one put forward by TheTrueCentrist (chance), or theoretical physicists (the quantum foam), are just as valid as God as a potential PM. I see no compelling reason to believe one over any of the others. Hence this “proof” of God’s existence succeeds or fails dependent on whether or not this can be shown.

 

[empther]

If that cannot be shown then suggestions like the one put forward by TheTrueCentrist (chance), or theoretical physicists (the quantum foam), are just as valid as God as a potential PM.

“Chance” has no substantial existence. It is a mental concept we use to attempt to quantify the future occurence of events when we don’t know all the factors involved. But “chance” doesn’t exist if nothing exists. Nor can it create.

Quantum mechanics is similar. The laws of quantum mechanics are real only where there is something for them to work. The laws can’t create something where there is nothing. It’s like saying we’ll pass a law to prevent flying blue whales from flying between the skyscrapers of NYC. There are no flying blue whales and the law won’t create any.

---

Can something that is not supernatural also not be natural?
Aren’t those the only two choices?
If the PM isn’t supernatural, then it would have to be part of the natural world, and therefore not its creator. It wouldn’t be PM.

---

If God isn’t infinite, then he’s not omnipotent because he’s limited by something else.
If God isn’t infinite, he’s not supernatural because he’s limited by something.
And so on. It’s a package deal.
Consider a car. Take away the motor and it’s not a car. Take away the wheels and it’s not a car. Take away the drive train and it’s not a car.

Take away God’s infinity,
or omniscience,
or omnipresence,
or eternity,
or necessity,
or supreme oneness,
or goodness
or perfection
and you have no God
because all these things which we with our limited intellects refer to by different words are all one thing in God.

No God leaves you with nothing but things of the natural world, none of which can create out of nothing because they are not omnipotent, are not their own existence and can’t generate anything unlike themselves.

Think about it for a semester. Then get back to me.

 

[Candide_West]

“Chance” *has no substantial existence. *It is a mental concept we use to attempt to quantify the future occurence of events when we don’t know all the factors involved. * But “chance” doesn’t exist if nothing exists. *Nor can it create.

Ok, how so now you just need to provide arguments to support the above statements about chance (that there could not possibly have been a timeless chance that something could pop into existence) and you’ve shot down TheTrueCentist’s suggestion for a PM.*

*Quantum mechanics is similar. *The laws of quantum mechanics are real only where there is something for them to work. * The laws can’t create something where there is nothing. *

Ok, but of course if there was a timeless pre-existing “eternal quantum foam” then there would be “something” for the laws of quantum mechanics to work on.*

So all you need to do is show that such a thing is impossible. And you have shot down that suggestion as well.

Of course at the moment you are just dealing with these one by one. In order for this to work as a proof you’ll need to show that nothing else, no matter what your interlocutors can imagine, could possibly be a PM except God.
*

*---------------------------------------------------------------------
Can something that is not supernatural also not be natural? **
Aren’t those the only two choices? *
If the PM isn’t supernatural, then it would have to be part of the natural world, and therefore not its creator. *It wouldn’t be PM.

Ok, well that depends what you mean by the term supernatural. If you just mean “not natural” then no I don’t suppose anything can be both natural and supernatural. However, usually when people talk about supernatural they are referring to things like ghosts, magic, gods, demons etc. Which means the term carries a very different set of implications.*

If all you mean by “supernatural” is something which existed or exists outside our universe, then yes I suppose a PM is likely to be “supernatural”. Of course by this definition both “chance” and a “eternal quantum foam” would be “supernatural”.*
*

*---------------------------------------------------------------
*
If God isn’t infinite, then he’s not omnipotent because he’s limited by something else.
If God isn’t infinite, *he’s not supernatural because he’s limited by something.
And so on. *It’s a package deal. *
Consider a car. * Take away the motor and it’s not a car. *Take away the wheels and it’s not a car. *Take away the drive train and it’s not a car.
*
Take away God’s infinity,
or omniscience,
or omnipresence,
or eternity,
or necessity,
or supreme oneness,
or goodness
or perfection
and you have no God
because all these things which we with our limited intellects refer to by different words are all one thing in God.

Understood, of course that doesnt show that such a thing exists, or is a sentient being if it does exist.*
*

*No God leaves you with nothing but things of the natural world, none of which can create out of nothing because they are not omnipotent, are not their own existence and can’t generate anything unlike themselves.

Ok, that seems to be what you’re trying to argue support of here. That nothing else could possibly be the PM. Ok, great please go ahead.