Posted: Apr 17, 2011 12:39 am
WLC wrote:Premise 1 seems obviously true—at the least, more so than its negation...
Will S wrote:The only way out is to argue that even things which never began to exist must also have a cause - which lands the theist right back with the first, and obviously incorrect, version of the argument.
And so the long day wears on ....
...it certainly does.
The catch-all assumption at the heart of WLC's favoured first premise, the clause that things 'begin' to exist rather than simply existing, is designed specifically cast Mr God as an/the un-caused, non-beginning thing. This is necessary of course otherwise we have knotty questions like how did God's grandparents first meet, or some other expression of infinite regress. So he (supposedly) provides a logical proof for the existence of god by the universal condition that everything that exists has to begin to exist and then, once god has been handily proved, he simply exempts god from the condition necessary to his proof.
