Well a basic philosophical, and scientific, principle is that from nothing nothing comes. In other words, something cannot come from nothing. For that reason there had to be some type of being that existed from the beginning, before the universe was created, or else nothing would exist today. This known as God, the only necessary being whose non-existence would be a contradiction. I don't see how science could contradict such a fundamental notion, which is not incompatible with science, on the contrary...

Rafael: Many scientists find that at the time of creation of the so called Big Bang, that time as well as space were brought into existence together, so any claim about God being around before this event makes no sense.

Well, maybe it's the word "God' you have a problem with. Try to think of some First Cause, for to think in an infinite chain of causes and effects is much more absurd, as opposed to one First uncaused Cause. Denying this, one would have to be believe that a thing is the cause of its own existence, which is totally ludicrous. It's much more reasonable to believe that a begin existed from the beginning, from all eternity that is.

Also, complex and constant order can not exist without an intelligence behind it, the one who orders. So a building cannot accidentally be made by the winds. Why not? Because it is extremely orderly. Now nature is probably the most orderly reality that exists. Therefore...

What happens in the scientific environment, for the most part, is that recourse to complicated arguments is the norm, while denying the most basic fundamental principles.

The idea of First Cause being a being, an interesting employment of words alone, goes against the physical sciences. While a force could plausibly have consciousness is that falculty necessary anyway to ceate or to create awareness of being, there comes that word again, created? Creators tend to be terribly self-conscious.

It seems to me that people still seem to struggle with randomness. The lack of conscious purpose in stars, planets, oceans, and us: that we fulfill a contingent need based on the physical needs of other forces.

Rafael and Stanley, you are both still thinking in terms of time being continuous. When it began with creation what did it?

Well, not so much a question of time, but of priority. If being is a an actual thing that exists, where doesn't being itself come from. Who or what gave me being, and who gave that being...etc.? Not so much according to time, but priority.

Stanley Wilkin some philosophers and theologians (ex: Aquinas) define God not as 'a being', but as being itself. This puts a different perspective on things.

David Harold Chester, the notion of God being there "before" the big bang is misleading, and linked to the fact that we cannot conceptualize anything outside of time. Instead, it's more akin to what Rafael Gonzalez alludes to, as in God is thought of at the cause of time itself.

The claims could both be true, but the truth conditions are very different. Religious facts are not considered on the basis of the scientific method. In turn, science is not considered „true“ on the basis of revelations. Further, scientific facts are not considered true (much less dogmatically so!), but, at best, well supported by evidence.

Thanks for sharing Arben! Joachim, this is philosophy, apart from divine revelation or religion. In other words, this is natural knowledge based on reason, that points to the existence of a First cause, aka, God. The scientific method is inductive, from particulars to universal, effects to causes, it is based on verifiable experiments and the conclusions are universalized. Philosophy is predominately deductive, from universals to particulars, causes to effects. Basically science is experimentation and philosophy is reasoning, sound arguments. Both are considered natural knowledge, not religious belief, and they mutually need each other.

Rafael,

philosophy has been employed both in the service of religion/theology as in science. Indeed, if you define it as a method, as you do, rather than as a tradition, then surely it is inseparable from science.

I gather from the rest of your comment that you mean to say that you can „deduce“ the existence of God independent of religious belief. (It would follow that you can believe God exists without being religious. Curious enough, but let’s grant it for the sake of argument.) And sure enough, there is of course a tradition of philosophers who have in various ways deduced the necessity for impersonal, universal, non-agential first causes or principles and the like; but the only reason to identify this entity with God can ever be a property informed by revelation. How else could they have known that the entity they deduced to exist was God?

Well actually Aristotle, a Greek pagan philosopher, called the First Cause Theos (which is "God" in English) in his Physics. Xenophanes, amount others also uses this term and believes in one God, though some interpretive him differently. For that reason, the existence of God is not only the object of religion/revelation but of philosophy/reason. God conversation.

Rafael,

you did not answer my central question: Again, identifying God with whatever has been „proven“ to exist (first cause, universal principle etc.) is itself not part of the deductive argument. All the Western philosophers you can cite who employed reason in the name of religion were not only intimately familiar with ideas of allfather-like Gods who could personify such abstract entities (and calling Aristotle „pagan“ only points to your exclusion of the Greek pantheon from veritable Goodhod, again an assumption that is derived from the revelation of a different, „true“ God. Historically, the Christian God owes everything to Zeus). They were highly personally motivated to prove that „their“ God existed. Indeed, the era defined by the Scholastics was highly important for the Western development of the idea of reason as we now know it, and the Scholastics were essentially occupied with providing what we would today call a post-hoc rationalization of Christian lore. The fact that spiritually inclined or all-out religious philosophers, or sometimes simply philosohers employed or coerced or censored by the Catholic Church, provided deductive arguments for God‘s existence does not establish that the existence of God is the object of reason.

You can only establish that if you provide a reasonable argument for why the first cause, the unmoved mover, etc., has to be God. For all we know, those philosophers proved the existence of the Big Bang (or rather, not its existence, but metaphysical necessity, which are still very different things).

I'm not too sure what you're saying. Maybe you are too focused on the cuasi-emotionally charged term "God". Also I don't know how you can harmonize the following, what you wrote:

"The fact that spiritually inclined or all-out religious philosophers, or sometimes simply philosophers employed or coerced or censored by the Catholic Church, provided deductive arguments for God‘s existence does not establish that the existence of God is the object of reason."

What difference does it make if the philosophers were religious or not? The arguments independently should prove validly or not without ad hominem reference.

In fact, most religious, based on fideism, reject the philosophical proofs of God's existence, i.e. almost all Protestant sects (traditional ones), Islam, Hinduism etc. Really only the Catholic Church, assuming the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, reasoned God's existence based on reason alone, regardless of which God it was, which is an irrelevant question.

It seems to me that you point to underlying intention here; but that also is irrelevant, whether it was good or bad. The question is: are the arguments sound or not? Religion really has no play here.

Here's the basic deductive argument, from Aristotle:

From Nothing nothing comes (basic principle).

But things exist now.

Therefore, there had to be something that existed from "the beginning", from eternity, if you will (bc if not then today there would be nothingness).

This is deduction is syllogistic form.

We define God as the Creator of Heaven and Earth, according to the Bible. Admitted that this definition does not cover all of the universe, we need to extend it, but the basic concept is the same. Now this kind of definition clearly makes the action and the defined object into one, which is a closed and unsatisfactory form as if it were absolute. But this is the problem stated in a different way, we need (illogically) to accept the existence of opposite concepts together. We will fail to make philosophical progress by insisting on perfect definitions.

I am not sure about this. Since the creation process includes that of space-time we cannot expect such a Creator to operate inside the physics that are commonly accepted as being a necessary part of our universe.

Rafael,

I am repeating my question to you for the third time, and I‘m afraid I really can’t do it any more clearly than this: why is what Aristotle proved to exist God, rather than the Big Bang?

What I wrote about the backgrounds of these philosophers was not an ad hominem, but a pointer to where their motivation to identify the object of such proofs and God came from. As David wrote above: „We define God as the Creator of Heaven and Earth, according to the Bible“.

Joachim,

I think the principle is clear from Aristotle, that is, there has to be a necessary being from all eternity, call it God, energy, whatever (though it seems it must be personal and intelligent, but this is another discussion). The Big Bang is not a being though, but an event, so I'm not sure what you're asking. Whether the first being is called "God" (Theos) or Phillip is really irrelevant. One can call it Big Bang also. Why not? Lol.

Aristotle's "Theos" is an impersonal mechanical god, if you will. That's simply the word he uses to call the First Cause or Prime Mover, namely, Theos.

In the end, even science would have to admit that from nothing nothing comes and for that reason, something had to always be existing, and this Aristotle called God. Does this clarify what Aristotle taught?

What preceded the Big Bang, basically a tiny particle full of energy, could be considered the Prime Mover I guess, but this would have to exist from all eternity. In the end, there couldn't be a time when nothing existed bc nothing would exist now.

Rafael,

yes, that‘s what I meant. Note that each philosophers‘ preconceptions about God may have gone into their idea of the being whose existence they attempted to prove, but they obviously could only prove whatever properties were formally derived from their premises. Nothing about Aristotle‘s proof itself suggests that the „first cause“ is a personal God - that just isn’t part of the proof.

Hence my saying that any identification has to rely on revelation - on direct insight into the attributes of God.

I wouldn't say that both are true, but they can certainly be spelled out in a way so that they aren't incompatible, as has been done in the case of evolution and Catholicism.

At a point in this discussion the arguments become illogical but we cannot manage to progress without both opposing aspects being taken as correct. This is not a matter of balancing two opposing views. This complication suggests that the human process of logical sensible thinking is not sufficiently close to reality to be viable in an actual worldly (or universally) true existence. Its not thinking outside the box, its thinking both inside and outside of it simultaneously!

I used to claim that the trouble with religious faith is that it is 100% certain and the trouble with scientific knowledge is that it isn't!

In regard to the existence of a PERSONAL God, even though Aristotle does not prove this per se, there seems that reason does point it. A basic philosophical principle, which is also used widely in science, is that the effect cannot be metaphysically superior to its cause; the effect cannot have an essential reality that it didn't receive somehow from its cause. Therefore, since we are persons, individual rational substances, therefore our cause must be also, that is a rational substance, for where does personhood itself come from?

That philosophy does not demonstrate which came first, the chicken or the egg. Therefore I reject it. We need to think at a greater distance and perspective than simply "outside of the box"

True that we can't say WHICH came first, yet SOMETHING had to be first obviously. We may not naturally know WHAT came first, but we do know THAT something was first. Again, from nothing nothing comes, and this is a basic scientific principle. Something cannot come from nothingness, therefore there had to be always a SOMETHING. If not then today there would be NOTHINGNESS, but there isn't, therefore...

As I already pointed out, logic fails here and a new kind of thinking is needed which is more realistic!

Logic fails here? Any specific claim?

Michael, who is it that claims that we must understand matters through logic? (Incidentally I think you used the wrong word: "theology" which is about religion and not theory-making.) Feelings do not always follow logical paths yet they are at least as real as matters within we recall (and cover) by scientific understanding.