First-cause argument

[Bruno]

That is a possible theory, but you have to be darn good to formalise it (make it plausible).

[burning_idle]

Yeah, it also still doesn’t explain the first cause without the use of a time loop style paradox, and that makes my head hurt.

ie: So we created God, and then God went and created us (at this point my head asplode! Or explodes if you want to use proper words)

[Bruno]

Haha, no, you’re arriving at a simple contradiction when you put things like that:being–>existence" is false
“(being–>god) and (god–>existence)” is true

therefore:

“(being–>god)–>existence” is true
“being–>existence” is true

but “being–>existence” is false = contradiction But there are models of god in which they are the creator and we are their creator. Quoting a PM I sent to Josh last week, based on conversations between me and DarkSider:

Like I said, I abandoned Atheism. Not particularly due to finding god, hiding in a shoebox, nor because I grew ashamed of my faith pairs; yet in a way exactly due to those two reasons.

I realized a grand part of the Atheist community is, put short, the antistrophe of Theists; that is, I realized they invest the exact same faith, in the exact same god, yet in the opposite direction. As such a doctrine seemed to me just as blind, and bearing consequences just as dangerous, I decided to drop it altogether in favour of an “I’m my own god” brand of Theism, so to speak.

“So to speak,” and only so to speak, for the best definition to the whole thing is not particularly that, but something of the sorts of “God happens.” However, the simplification thus given is tricky, as it would mislead one into thinking that my new doctrine is some minimalist approach to Magick. No—absolutely not.

The notion at play is that god is, so to say, a projection, something we project at the world out of an inherent potentiality of ours. We bear — I believe — a potential to god; a daimon (or a set thereof), a potentiality natural to the human condition, waiting to be brought about by being projected onto the Real. And that realisation of the daimon is god: god who materialises from the projection of the daimon — which is just another name for something we have in our mind, for some trickery of the psyche —; a projection of the daimon into the real world.

Perhaps god is, thus, like an ontological bridge between an episteme in our minds and the sensory reality. The daimon is, therefore, the desire to know — the potential to god, yes, but also the drive to philosophy, the lust for comprehension. In that sense, I think god has to be cultured, cherished, in whatever possible representation of his (“whatever possible,” of course, under the razor of some commonsense pragmatics): as a personification, perhaps, as a geometric form in the kabbalah, as a force of nature, as a sense of beauty. God is the pleasure in it all making sense, and as long as you don’t allow yourself to experience such pleasure in candid ingenuosity, as a mere ad-hoc as you put it, you should not deprive yourself of it.

That’s how I’ve been thinking these days.

[shatterspike1]

This argument fails itself. Saying god caused himself could easily justify saying the universe created itself. The argument is invalid.

[Bruno]

@Spike

This argument fails itself. Saying god caused himself could easily justify saying the universe created itself. The argument is invalid.

True… but can you point out where exactly anyone in this conversation claimed god created itself? No-one said that.

[Draginvry]

@burning_idle

Yeah, it also still doesn’t explain the first cause without the use of a time loop style paradox, and that makes my head hurt.

There is no time loop. He said that God was atemporal. Thus God wasn’t the “first” cause. Rather, God was always the cause. Think of it less as a loop, and more of a recurring phenomenon. One in which there is no beginning, because God references Himself, rather than time. In fact, it’s the opposite. God created time. Time references God, rather than vice-versa.

[Bruno]

@Draginvry

There is no time loop. He said that God was atemporal. Thus God wasn’t the “first” cause. Rather, God was always the cause.

Yet another model: dimensions. Since we can’t think of higher dimensions easily, lets do the opposite and just imagine everything we know — all the universe, in all moments, all of time and space — condensated into a sphere. Now think of god as something outside of that sphere: out of space, out of time, and in a sense, beyond those.

But you want a designer god, don’t you? Well, what about symbiotic panentheism? God is an entity which grows as we grow. We are part of god, and god depends on us. In that sense, god is some sort of living thing, which feeds on the permanence of our universe, a living creature which is alive because they can die — and will effectively die if this universe collapses. God an the universe in a quasi-identity, like body and soul form an individual. And in that sense, we are the cause of god, and god is the cause of us — a cause external to us, and beyond our existence and comprehension.

No complicated logics. Just the right positioning of words

[Draginvry]

I see God as creation, not creator. That is, I don’t believe God is some kind of actor sculpting the universe. Rather, God is the process of sculpting, the very act of creating itself.

In other words, God didn’t create a work of art. He is art. He is the substance of what makes art, art. God is the very act of living, of doing, of creating, of destroying, of protecting, the very essence of action. That is the first cause, and that is what gives me purpose. I don’t act to please God. I act because the action is God.

Of course, I could be a complete nutcase. But I’m a nutcase with a purpose. And a smiley