His argument wasn't that God exists. His argument is that your OP is a logical fallacy. As the only logical cause of a first cause is something that is eternal. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics agrees with him. Therefore, the universe itself is his evidence. But this thread is not about discussing the existence of God. This thread is predicated on a universe that has no God. He chose to not accept your premise on the grounds that it is a logical fallacy argument and I agree. I chose to accept your premise, not because I believe it was true but because I believe that without God man would deify himself, have no distinction between good and evil save pleasure and live only for the satisfaction of his primitive needs and desires.
Actually, the "First Cause" cosmological argument is a logical fallacy. As the argument posits that all existence rests on causality, there must have been a "Primary Cause". However, if all of existence is causal, then that "Primary Cause" must, itself have a cause. Otherwise, you are arguing that it is possible for a cause to be unique, and self-propegating. But, if it is possible for a cause to not require a preceding cause, why then cannot the Big Bang be that "primary cause". No God necessary.
You are veering from YOUR own OP. It seems that what you really want to argue is the existence of God and not what the world would look if there was no God.
You're the one defending the argument that without God there would be no universe, and using a ;logically flawed argument to do so.
No. I think you should go back and re-read what I wrote. I explained to you why DGS49 did not accept your premise and although I agreed with his logic, I did accept your premise for the purpose of this discussion. You are the one who is wetting your pants to make this about the existence of God. In fact, you are still doing it, lol. I'm happy enough to discuss what I believe that world would look like.
The problem is that the world (more accurately the society) that you describe, absent God, presumes that a Godless society must also embrace the very worst in human nature. You seem incapable of envisioning a society that is capable of forming ethical decisions without some outside force dictating everyone's decisions for them. You really seem to despise humanity.
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That's because that is what history shows, because that is the natural order of what you propose:
"...boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.
The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.
The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.
I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.
It has made man the measure of all things on earth — imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.
We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.
If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.
It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.
Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.
Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?
If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.
The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward." Solzhenitsyn
