[Aedes]

Hi Don,

Originally Posted by Donald Schneider

Still, such “proofs” have their usage in that they establish the logical framework within which an asserted proposition can tenably exist; in my case, a creator. It is thus up to opponents of my assertion to establish a logical framework for their competing contention that the reality that we exist within and observe has or had no creator by successfully refuting my proof on a logical basis.

How come? You've made a positive existential assertion of a creator. Well, that's not entirely true, you've expressed the necessity of a creator, which I take to also mean, implicitly, that there DID exist one at the origin of all things (though you do not assert that that creative entity still exists in the present). Since a positive existential assertion can be verified through observation, why should the honus of responsibility be on the rest of the world to offer a logical refutation? Why shouldn't the honus be on you to show that there is physical validation and not merely logical coherence?

Your pointing out that from any cause one can extrapolate a virtually infinite regression of antecedent causes is also not contested by myself or anyone. So I don’t understand your point. Yes, there are myriad causes and effects that result in the given reality that constitutes any singular, four-dimensional point within spacetime.

If you accept this infinite regress, then your concepts of "cause" and "effect" boil down to nothing more than the physical phenomenon of energy transfer over space/time. And this phenomenon inheres and consists in and between things, it is not applied externally. This is something that Newton himself understood quite well through his mathematical description of gravity.

But I'm happy to leave behind the terminology. The argument, again, regresses to your conception of what Aristotle called the unmoved mover. And thus your argument necessitates an external process of some kind that can seemingly exist eternally on its own without being "caused" unto itself. And if the fundamental forces and processes in nature all consist in the material universe, from the mass of a planet down to the attractive forces between gluons and quarks, then your argument requires that it was not always this way -- that at some point, in the beginning (bereshith, if you like), that force was given to these phenomena. Aside from a logical construct, on what basis should we believe this? Why MUST an external creator have done this as opposed to the neutral phenomenon of these forces existing naturally in the the instantaneous aftermath of the Big Bang, when an infinitely massive singularity was fragmented? And isn't it possible that the Big Bang was only the beginning of our universe's current iteration, but there existed time and space before the Big Bang that is beyond our ability to observe?