Critique of the Cosmological Argument for Proof of the Existence Of God

[tanthrix]

I've decided for my own sake to start critiquing arguments for the existence of God as we go through them in my Philosophy of Religion class at PSU. It will mainly be a nice way for me to get my thoughts out on paper and keep interested in my class, but it will also help explain why I am an atheist to anyone who is curious

Comments

[zer]

Ahoy! This is really cool and sounds like good fun.

To start, I think it is possible that Aquinas' assumptions may be a categorical error. He makes a few basic human-level physics observations, but only by a very rough analogy can they apply to the huge cosmological (and tiny quantum-whatever level)-- extending his assumptions (partially) to the modern scientific worldview brings in much more complex systems and ideas that Aquinas simply couldn't know about (and neither do lots of fundies nowadays, at that). I'm not sure how to see it, but people are talking about a forest (or at least a grove) when he was talking about a tree. A Newtonian conception of physics, however immaculate, doesn't quite cut it.

4. Therefore, there must be a first mover and this is God
Then maybe what they call "God" is just "the big bang" or something else mysterious, but this mislabling of phenomena in no way proves that a personal Christian god exists, or that the "first mover" has any qualities besides moving first.

For the restated argument:

1. The universe could not have popped into existence from nothingness, for that is absurd.

I recall reading in The God Particle about how a slight insymmetry in how particles decay may be why matter and energy exists in the universe (and wasn't all annihilated with anti-matter). Maybe the fix to this accounting 'error'is just offset in time by a few trillion years when our universe runs into an anti-universe (through the 4th dimension, of course) and mutually annihilates. But I'm really just extending some whackiness from the quantum level to a really high level which is sloppy (and what flakey people do a lot to legitimate their flakey ideas-- "Look! Quantum stuff is nonsensical! So is my worldview!").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle
(See the "Virtual Particles in a Vacuum" heading):
"An important example of the "presence" of virtual particles in the vacuum is the Casimir effect. Here, the explanation of the effect requires that the total energy of all of the virtual particles in the vacuum be added together. Thus, although the virtual particles themselves are not directly observable in the laboratory, they do leave an observable effect: their zero-point energy results in forces acting on suitably arranged metal plates or dielectrics."

So they're not there, but they do stuff. Spooky!

I think it comes down to a problem of us not having enough information.
More particle accelerators!!

Premise 2 just stated that everything must have a beginning, so how is God exempt from this?

Hah, that's awesome. I remember after the story in Genesis where God does all this stuff and makes the world -- "So where'd God come from?"
And then "they" start introducing more wild ideas, like saying if something named "god" started the universe, "he" is also timeless and perfect, for some reason, and obviously not the manifestation of some huge and unimaginably advanced alien technology. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!!!

Sorry, I got far too silly. Keep this going.

[tanthrix]

Quantum physics is a branch of science that absolutely confounds me. A while back I had some grand desire to figure it all out after reading some bits of "The Elegant Universe" and a few other pop culture physics books, but that desire has since subsided. I still enjoy the watered down versions we get in those types of books and NOVA documentaries, but I feel that since I don't understand any of the underlying math I have no hope of understanding the "big picture," if such a thing is even possible. Huzzah for arm chair physics!

"Look! Quantum stuff is nonsensical! So is my worldview!"

I about fell over laughing when I read that. That statement sums up with unparalleled succinctness "What the @!$!@$$ Do We Know Anyway?" (I stopped watching that movie when it got to the part about water crystals forming differently based on the moods of the observers or something) You can't take quantum physics and slap it on the macroscopic world. If you could you'd be receiving the Nobel prize in physics for finally coming up with a grand unified theory. In all seriousness though, what you were describing still seems indicate something being there in the first place. Read my reply to Ruthanolis and let me know what you think about the part concerning something from nothing - I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

You hit the nail on the head about needing more particle accelerators. We need more science in general.