Wednesday 13 May 2009

Arguing For the Existence of God: Is The First Cause Argument Valid???

Does God Exist?



It is a question that befuddles most, if not all fence-sitters who aren't all that sure about the existence of God, and it is an important question: Does God exist?

One of the most perplexing questions would be the validity of the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient but not necessarily an omnibenevolent deity. Since the beginning of Man's early attempts at learning, the need to explain his beginnings, as well as the existence of all and sundry, has flummoxed one too many a philosopher. We are, after all, a product of nature's wry, unpredictable ways, subject to both her desire to nurture and destroy.

& it is in attempting to anthropomorphizing what we cannot explain into viable, humanoid deities which brings about religions, & arguments supporting the existence of deities have often been pandered about as straight facts, rather than points to be debated, and in this post I shall attempt to expose the fallacy of such arguments.

The most popular amongst them:

THE FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT

The “First Cause” Argument states:

1. Everything has a cause.
2. Nothing can cause itself.
3. Everything is caused by another thing.
4. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
5. There must be a first cause.
6. God was the first cause.

Kalam's Cosmological Argument:


Kalam's argument brings the first Cause/Cosmological argument one step further:

1. Everything of type X has a cause.
2. There is something of type X.
3. For some reason (namely, Y), the series of causes of an X must terminate in a first cause.
4. This first cause can be identified with God.

According to both arguments, God can be attributed as:

1. A deity that transcends space and time, i.e the four dimensions, a being unrestrained by our realm or if you will, our reality.

2. God has no cause, since God, in essence is the first cause. If God has a first cause, then the argument becomes circular: i.e if God was created, who created God, and who created the deity that created God, and so on.

Perhaps a brief review of the cosmological argument will shed some light on these arguments.

THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL UNIVERSE





Now, assuming if God transcends space and time, we can assume that, what these Christians are trying to put across is that God exists in a higher dimensional plane, outside what is now known as the forth dimension, time.

Before I carry on, it is best for me to explain, in brief detail, the dimensional aspects of our existence.

In a practical sense of the word, we live in a 3-dimensional world. Everything that we see and touch has a three-dimensional realm, while our three-dimensional realm is also the basic make-up of the forth dimension, time.

To explain this in greater detail, imagine, then a square piece of cube.

Now we know that a cube is a combination of three dimensional aspects: Length, breadth, and depth. Imagine, then, if I have the ability to remove any one of the aspects, e.g the length, the cube will cease to exist altogether.

In short, the cube is the sum of three dimensions, all dependent on one another to provide the three-dimensional aspect of our existence.

From this example, we can observe that:

1. A higher dimensional plane is the sum of all physical aspects of its adjacent lower planes.

This alludes to the fact that any deity that exists outside space and time will therefore be subjected and dependent on the existence of our three-D world, since his dimensional plane will include the physical and mathematical aspects of space and time, all of which are lower, but nonetheless, important components of this deity's higher dimension.

2. A Creator from a higher plane/dimension can never create anything based entirely on lower dimensional aspects, since lower-dimensional objects cannot exist independently in a higher dimensional plane.

From a three-D point of view, this simply means that everything we create will, in principle, be in 3-D form. Even paper, which is often regarded as a two-dimensional plane, has negligible, though still existent depth, which means it is still a three-D object. Anything we see or create on our three- D plane cannot be regarded as two-dimensional object. Even a line drawn on a piece of paper has three dimensional aspects. In short, lower-dimensional objects cannot exist independently in a higher dimension.

This means that, if God the Creator creates Man, he must be of a similar dimensional plane as us. If he transcends space and time, naturally our existence will transcend space and time as well!

In short, we are basically all demi-gods and goddesses, if you will.

3. The existence of a higher dimension is entirely dependent on the existence of the sum of all lower dimensions.

As in the example of the cube, any removal of one of its 3 inherent dimensions will mean the ultimate demise of the cube itself.

Take another example, time. Time ceases to exist, once our dimension ceases, since time, in essence, is dependent on the existence of our three-D world. In short, if the three-D dimensional world on which our Universe rests on ceases to exist, God is as good as dead. How then, can God be omnipotent, if he transcends space and time, and that his entire existence rests on our dimensional plane?

CONCLUSION: GOD IS UNFATHOMABLE

While this argument cannot disprove God (After all, a presupposed supernatural deity may still be able to transcend the entire multi-dimensional complex theorem), what is at least elucidated, in my view, is that necessitating a Creator for the "designs" of the Universe brings about more questions than it solves.

Add to the infinitely complex problem of identifying the real identity of the Creator or the supernatural deities involved (Whether they are of Greek, Jewish, Christian, or some inexplicable origin), the question of the existence of God becomes infinitesimally small, & even if a deity exists, the mathematical probability of us "knowing" this benign super creature, as the Christians are wont to put it, is close to a big, fat zero.

In conclusion, I would love to let my imagination run wild, albeit for a brief span in the grand scheme of things: Maybe, just maybe, a God does exist. But he just doesn't want to have anything to do with us, doesn't give a damn about our homo sapien asses, and really, he would just like to leave things as they are:

The Anonymous Force of the Grand Cosmos
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