There really is no good argument against the idea that the only sufficient cause of moral self-awareness is an eternal prior moral self-awareness.
xzins: There really is no good argument against the idea that the only sufficient cause of moral self-awareness is an eternal prior moral self-awareness
Who said anything about moral self-awareness?
Creation ex nihilo goes to the heart of physical cosmologists. It is seen as a failure to Steinhardt and his cyclic model and to Hawking and his imaginary time model that the physical cosmologist cannot explain the origin of real time.
Infinity past is a necessary "belief" of all atheists but it does not hold up to scrutiny by math or science.
Real time and real space are required for physical causation which is the fundamental necessary element for all physical cosmologies whether multi-verse, ekpyrotic, multi-world or whatever.
Mathematically, the dimension of a space is the minimum number of coordinates (axes) necessary to identify a point within the space.
A space of zero dimensions is a point; one dimension, a line, two dimensions, a plane; three, a cube, etc.
That is the geometry of it. In zero dimensions, the mathematical point is indivisible.
It is not nothing. It is a spatial point. A singularity is not nothing.
In ex nihilo Creation, the dimensions are not merely zero, they are null, dimensions do not exist at all. There is no space and no time. Period.
There is no mathematical point, no volume, no content, no scalar quantities. Ex nihilo doesn’t exist in relationship to anything else; there is no thing.
In an existing physical space, each point (e.g. particle) can be parameterized by a quantity such as mass. The parameter (e.g. a specific quantity within the range of possible quantities) is in effect another descriptor or quasi-dimension that uniquely identifies the point within the space.
Moreover, if the quantity of the parameter changes for a point, then a time dimension is invoked. For example, at one moment the point value is “0” and the next it is “1”.
Wave propagation cannot occur in null dimensions nor can it occur in zero spatial dimensions, a mathematical point; a dimension of time is required for any fluctuation in a parameter value at a point.
Moreover, wave propagation must also have a spatial/temporal relation from cause point to effect point, i.e. physical causation.
For instance “0” at point nt causes “1” at point n+1t+1 which causes "0" at point n+1t+2 etc..
Obviously, physical wave propagation (e.g. big bang/inflationary model) cannot precede space/time and physical causality.
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
All physical cosmologies require space and time for physical causality. Period.
There is no ex nihilo explanation for the beginning of real space and real time and therefore physical causality.
And because, since the 1960’s forward, measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation consistently agree that the universe is expanding – that there was a beginning of real space and real time – we know that there was creation ex nihilo. Moving the goalpost back to prior universes does not make that issue go away.
Only God can be the uncaused cause, the first cause, The Creator.
Space, time and physical causation are not properties of God the Creator. They are properties of the Creation. Only God is uncaused.