Originally Posted by
BlakNWyte
And an endless chain of inertial causes is just a fancy phrase for infinity. An actual infinite amounts of causes is mathematically impossible. Thus the universe is not infinite.
You do realize that if you take that approach then god is "mathematically impossible" as well, right? It's
irrelevant if god "didn't come into existence" because his actions certainly did at some point in time. What caused them? What triggered god to change the state from being
one without universe to being
one with universe? You can't selectively use principle of causality here and abandon it there. A theist/deist is faced with all the same problems.
It's hard to make sense out of existence without eternity. And infinity is actually possible in mathematics, but it's not so feasible in real world.
I'm starting to think string theory may explain things better after all, but to even grasp the basics of it requires extensive research.
For anyone interested, here's a nice site which chews it out for average joe:
http://www.superstringtheory.com/
Originally Posted by
BlakNWyte
The Kalam Cosmological argument actually stops with "the universe has a cause" and anything past that is irrelevant to it's validity. But that alone is still a powerful argument.
Powerful argument for what? Certainly not for for god, since adding god's actions into endless chain of causes solves nothing.
Last edited by Odlov; Sep 10, 2009 at 06:17 AM.