Replies

Reflect back on our previous discussion of time. I described time (and you ended abandoning the discussion and up making no ultimate objection) as not actually existing. "All of an eternal nature" is bounded by the universe that exists "now." All the causes of all the effects that constitute the universe "now" all existed in previous instances of now, and no longer exist. Boiling it down to the universe itself as a comprehensive entity and treating it as single "effect" (though we know it actually is not one), the "cause" of the universe that is "now" is the universe that immediately preceded it. Thus your intuitive need for "an external cause" is met perfectly.

I'm sorry, but I thought we had rejected this notion of "now" as the only thing that exists when you allowed that a thought and an author were entities with a duration, but yet existed. Also you volunteered that thoughts had no particular beginning or end but were a process of thinking.

Certainly than in the same sense larger systems exist. Or is there a particular way the cosmos must be partitioned?

You are taking many rabbit trails, which I accept as possibilities for the sake of argument until I show that they can't be true. But then you seem to think I have accepted them.

I'm wondering if you are simply consciously muddying the water.

At this time I declare victory, and the field is mine.

Seemingly you won't recognize this by sheer force of will. But I can not help that. I have a life I need to get back to. I sincerely hope God blesses you.

"I'm sorry, but I thought we had rejected this notion of "now" as the only thing that exists when you allowed that a thought and an author were entities with a duration, but yet existed. Also you volunteered that thoughts had no particular beginning or end but were a process of thinking."

Nope. You apparently did not understand that discussion at all. You can of course go back and reread it, or we can simply have it again. My point then was that thoughts are just like every other actual thing, and exist only "now." Since mind is what brain does, the illusion of time in thought is no different from the illusion of time in every other material thing. It is a convention we use to understand the sequence of "nows." Nothing else.

"Certainly than in the same sense larger systems exist. Or is there a particular way the cosmos must be partitioned?

There is no obvious partition of the actual cosmos that is not arbitrary.

"You are taking many rabbit trails, which I accept as possibilities for the sake of argument until I show that they can't be true. But then you seem to think I have accepted them."

I'm still waiting for you to show that they can't be true, instead of merely asserting that they are not true. You certainly have made no effort to challenge the core assertion I have made that if the premise that all effects must have a cause is true, then the only logical conclusion is an eternal uncreated universe.

In every case so far you have reached a point in the discussion where you arbitrarily insert God for no reason that can be distinguished from your child's assertion that God put milk in the store.

You took great pride in your child's assertion, even though you know it was wrong. You know for a fact that the chain of causality that placed that milk in the store did not commence with a direct creative act of God in the dairy section. Your child simply got tired with following the true pathway and arbitrarily punted... calling it God. Nothing you have done in this thread can be distinguished from that arbitrary and false choice of a 4 year old.

"I'm wondering if you are simply consciously muddying the water."

There is no mud. There is no water. There are simply two different conclusions, one reached linearly from premises and logic, and the other reached in a circle by intuitively leaping to an already predetermined result.

Both conclusions terminate in an entity that is eternal and uncreated. Mine is the universe, yours is God.

I consider the former as a superior conclusion if for no other reason than because we actually have evidence that a universe exists.

I am still completely in the dark as to why you think that your conclusion is in some way better.