Replies

I know you think this is a brilliant argument, and it would work if there were no possibility of a supernatural designer, but, by the definition of the word, a supernatural designer is not bound by natural, physical laws, since any such designer is the creator of said laws and therefore must exist outside of them. Your argument precludes the possibility of natural designers "all the way down" (e.g., superintelligent aliens that designed our planet and our species) but does nothing against a supernatural one. If, e.g., the God of the Bible designed our universe, as described, he needs no beginning since he exists outside of time (which is physical).

For example, if advances in physics one day allow us to create a new Universe ourselves (parallel to our own), that would, by your definition, make us "supernatural designers" with respect to the new Universe, yet that would hardly therefore mean that we "need no beginning", as you incorrectly conclude.

I think the question is purely rhetorical. If one assumes a designer, then somewhere at sometime at the bottom of the pile of turtles or space aliens has to be a supernatural creator, i.e. God or any of his many manifestations (FSM, Allah or the Hindu variety or some other thing). There is no other explanation.

Does not follow. Even if a "supernatural designer" existed outside of *our* space-time system, you have not demonstrated that it would necessarily be free from causality in its *own* realm, or that that realm would have no time of its own, etc.

There is no way to prove it one way or another because we've already agreed to the fact that any hypothetical system outside our space-time is independent of our domain. Time is a known feature of ours. Why every other? An existential proof does not imply universality. Particularly, why should a hypothetical being existing outside of our domain be bound by the rules that it invented for ours? If you and I were splotches on a two-dimensional canvas that may or may not have occurred naturally--you would shake your fist at the designer insisting that he also must be bound to our two-dimensional domain.

For example, if advances in physics one day allow us to create a new Universe ourselves (parallel to our own), that would, by your definition, make us "supernatural designers" with respect to the new Universe, yet that would hardly therefore mean that we "need no beginning", as you incorrectly conclude.

I made no assertion that such a conclusion follows invariably. My only suggestion was the possibility that a designer existing outside one's physical domain is not necessarily bound by the laws of said physical domain. You are taking my existential and trying to make it a universal. THAT does not follow.