You spelled deity wrong.
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'everything that begins to exist has a cause'
'an uncaused creator of the universe exists'
Key phrasing here is "begins to exist." According to the argument: "If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful."
'it is possible that in addition to physical time there is also metaphysical time'
A kind of time where you do not need to come into being in order to exist.. how does that even work
Just as described. Metaphysical time wold be infinite, without beginning or end (something very alien to humans who live in a universe defined by causality). A repeat from the syllogism may help explain: "An uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful."
It seems like it's turtles all the way down - if there exists a God, then surely it must exist in a place, within which our universe is held, and something must have happened before to create that god, and so on...
Not if the God has always existed in the metaphysical timeframe, nor is there any reason he should be bound to exist within our universe.
Maybe the truth about what is beyond our universe is simply incomprehensible to us, and there is no way that we can take the concepts of existence in this universe and apply them to the other place.
That is quite possible.
Again, I do not agree with the KalÄm cosmological argument, but for different reasons (the ones I stated priorly).
'everything that begins to exist has a cause'
'an uncaused creator of the universe exists'
That implies that God has never begun to exist.
'it is possible that in addition to physical time there is also metaphysical time'
A kind of time where you do not need to come into being in order to exist.. how does that even work
It seems like it's turtles all the way down - if there exists a God, then surely it must exist in a place, within which our universe is held, and something must have happened before to create that god, and so on...
Maybe the truth about what is beyond our universe is simply incomprehensible to us, and there is no way that we can take the concepts of existence in this universe and apply them to the other place.
I don't know.
I personally find the belief that there is a deity out there to be absurd. Stephen Hawking's position on God is as follows (source) and he makes some great points:
Do we need a God to set it all up so a Big Bang can bang? … Our everyday experience makes us convinced that everything that happens must be caused by something that occurred earlier in time. So it’s natural for us to assume that something—perhaps God—must have caused the universe to come into existence. But when we’re talking about the universe as a whole, that isn’t necessarily so.
…
The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself must come to a stop [at the singularity]. You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything. … So when people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth. The Earth is a sphere. It does not have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.â€
The same guy who quoted Hawking's position offered what I thought was a pretty decent rebuttal to some of what Hawking had to say. I italicized the points that the author made that I found myself disagreeing with.
Hawking’s second premise is that “there is no time prior to the beginning of time (the origin of the universe).†But he just assumes that the only kind of time possible is physical time. It is possible that in addition to physical time is another kind of time: metaphysical time. For example, we can imagine God existing prior to the universe—in the absence of matter, space, and physical time—counting down to the moment of creation in His mind: “3, 2, 1, Let there be!†Even a sequence of mental events requires the existence of time. If it is even possible to imagine counting in the absence of the material world, then it proves that it is at least possible that time could exist apart from physical time. And if that is possible, then Hawking’s second premise can also be undercut.
In summary, there is ample reason to think Hawking’s first premise is false. Temporal causation is not the only kind of causation possible, and it may not even be the case that temporal causation requires temporal priority. As for his second premise, there is good reason to think that physical time is not the only kind of time possible. And if there can be time apart from physical time, then it is possible for God to have existed before the universe, and to have exerted causal influence to create the universe that was temporally prior to the universe. There is no good reason, then, to adopt Hawking’s conclusion that the universe cannot have a cause. It can, and arguments such as the kalam cosmological argument and the principle of sufficient reason give us good reason to think the universe does have a cause, and that cause is God.
So to address my issues with some of what has just been said:
"There is no good reason, then, to adopt Hawking’s conclusion that the universe cannot have a cause."
Stephen Hawking cites the Big Bang as a "cause" for the universe.
"It can, and arguments such as the kalam cosmological argument and the principle of sufficient reason give us good reason to think the universe does have a cause, and that cause is God."
This is the KalÄm cosmological argument as taken from Wikipedia:
Craig states the KalÄm cosmological argument as a brief syllogism, most commonly rendered as follows:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause;
2. The universe began to exist;
Therefore:
3. The universe has a cause.
From the conclusion of the initial syllogism, he appends a further premise and conclusion based upon ontological analysis of the properties of the cause:
1. The universe has a cause;
2. If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful;
Therefore:
3. An uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
Referring to the implications of Classical Theism that follow from this argument, Craig writes:
"This, as Thomas Aquinas was wont to remark, is what everybody means by 'God".
I do not agree with the premise that: "If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful;."
As Hawking asked: "Do we need a God to set it all up so a Big Bang can bang?" I think not.
Is it possible that there is a deity, and that our universe is like one massive domino effect that he set into motion to see what would happen (perhaps he is not all-knowing)? But to me there is just no good reason to believe a deity exists...the universe as modeled by science doesn't require a deity in any part of it to explain phenomena.
I find it extremely unlikely that there is a deity, as there just seems to be no good reason to believe in one, other than, to quote Karl Marx that, "religion is the opium of the people." However, I also maintain that I am a mere mortal. I have a limited sensory and cognitive capacities as all other humans do, which may render others and myself unable to see this deity at work.
Or perhaps we encounter him when we die. So I consider myself agnostic, because truth be told, I really don't know what happens after death, or if our universe is some kind of experiment or strange stepping-stone to a next existence. That being said, I'm pretty sure that when I die, I will just enter into a state of permanent blankness. Like a dreamless sleep that I never awake from. But I have no way of knowing for sure that's what's going to happen.
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