Second Negative - Ben Brown


Actually, this sort of surprises me. You want to argue a bit about the universe requiring a creator. This whole theory that a first cause/designer must have existed has been dead for a while in phiosophy -even before the discovery of quantum mechanics. I'll get into quantum mechanics a little more in a while.

First I'd like to start out by putting this 'first cause' argument to rest. The argument begins as everything that exists required a cause. Then we realize the universe exists. So it must also have a cause. This basic argument looks like:

(1) Everything that exists has a cause

(2) The universe exists

(3) There can't be an infinite series of past causes

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(4) The universe must have been a first uncaused cause (God)

Now, this argument is plainly invalid because the conclusion (4) is directly discrepant with premise (1). So, we modifiy the argument a little bit:

(1) Everything that began to exist has a cause

(2) The universe began to exist

(3) There can't be an infinite series of past causes

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(3) The universe has an uncaused cause (God)

Well, this seems valid. But there are a few objections to it. First of all, there is really nothing to support premise (3). If you want to try, go ahead. Also, as it turns out, premise (1) is false. This is very important. All one has to do is a little research in the field of quantum mechanics (I've just started doing a lot -so I'm still not very well versed so to speak). We've essentially come to the conclusion that everything does not have a cause. Motion of electrons is probabilistic. In fact everything is probabilistic. But, I'll try to stay away from techinal stuff. The bottom line is that matter does come from nothing. Scientific American, December 1997 issue. The article is called "Exploiting Zero-Point Energy" pages 82 - 85. Matter comes from nothing.

You said that I said that since God can't be detected using the 5 senses, he can't exist. I never said this. I said that if we can't come to a rational idea of what he is, then he can't exist because we have no idea what 'he' or 'God' refers to. It's just nonsense to say something exists, but not have the vaguest clue about what it is. This raises another question. What is the supernatural world? Or the nonmaterialistic world? Do we have any clue about what this is? Apparently we think we do. But let's get right down to it. Do we? Well, what sort of evidence do we have for such a world? None that I can think of. But an even stronger argument against it is 'What is it?' What would it mean to be 'outside' of the natural world? We simply have no clue. We can use all sorts of comfusing lines like 'where logic fails' and 'where matter and energy don't exist' but still we have no idea what these phrases mean. That's the main point I keep hitting at. This is critical. If we have no idea what something is, then it does not exist. The reason being that there is no 'it' to which we are refering. The sentence is just words in a row with no sort of rationality outside of correct word usage. This sort of thing is dependent on language. And is really just a big confusing mess that can esily be brushed aside when we realize that any argument for or against it is pointless because 'it' in this usage is only a word. It has no refferent.

You also make some other nonsensical comments about God talking to us through our soul (despite that consciousness is as far as we can tell, material). To start off, we have no idea what a soul is. Nor do we know anything about what it would mean for God to talk to us through it. The comment you made concerning not listening to God is typical of theists. You try to force the undecided person make a choice. And that choice is between God existing and you listening to him and God existing and you not listening to him. You miss the whole point. God doesn't exist. And you can't listen to him. That's my answer. If God (whatever that is) wants to talk to me, I'm pretty damn certain he'd get through.

I didn't say there was no order in our universe. The point I was trying to get across is that our universe is very disordered. And again, direct all comments concerning cosmology to quantum mechanics. Many keep claiming God was what created the Big Bang. Wrong. The Big Bang is a theory that encompasses itself. It (by definition) needs no cause. There is simply no role a god would play in the Big Bang. All Christians seem to miss this (except the ones who blindly deny the theory).

I could go through and show you how black holes don't lose order or whatever, but seriously, this isn't going to get us anywhere. No matter how good a cosmological argument for the existence of God can be, it makes no difference. We haven't a clue what God is. God can not be defined outside of language. And if we don't have a clue what God is, any premises or conclusions using God are nonsensical because (as explained earlier) 'God' is nonsensical.

The reason this letter has taken so long is that I've been doing a lot of studies on quantum mechanics and other such stuff. And to be honest, the more I read, the more I realize that God is just a word that people mistake as an answer. But you know, I'm interested in learning how you started believing in God. Did someone give you that 'you have the choice to listen to God or ignore him' nonsense? Or did you really just not know enough about current science and instead of trying to explain it the correct way, you used the cop-out of 'God'? I just find it amazing that anyone well educated would go from a scientific background to a belief as irrational as God. Then again, I don't know how educated you are. You do cling to that first cause argument pretty tightly despite rational explanations of why it is invalid. So you're going to have to do better than this if you want to show that God exists. And you're also going to have to show what God is.


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