The fact that I am contingent means that there was a time when I was not, and there was a particular time when I became, thus

N.  I, sntjohnny can be said to have a beginning.

O.  I note that in my experience, every thing that has a beginning is also contingent.

I know of no exceptions.  Other people report the same experience.

Therefore,

Conclusion 3: Anything with a beginning is likely to be contingent.

I use the word 'likely' here, but really, if I stated it as "it MUST be contingent" this would be true.  The idea that a thing with a beginning also being noncontingent is an epistemological pitfall.  If a thing can have a beginning while being non-contingent (ie, an effect without a cause) then any given effect, from the large to the small, from the fact that my coffee is hot to the guy with the knife in his back, may in fact also be causeless.

But I say 'likely' because this is an a posteriori conclusion, even if it has d--ning a priori consequences if it is not true.

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P.  I am told that the universe had a beginning.

Q.  If it had a beginning, it is contingent.

R.  If it is contingent, "X" cannot be identified with it.

Conclusion 4:  I therefore have good reason to look for some thing other than the observable universe as the correct identifier of 'X.'

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Thoughts:

Things with beginnings are contingent.  They are caused.  I am aware of only one thing in all of human experience where it is alleged that something came to be without a cause, but it is a stretch.  It may be that it did have a cause and its just not known.  Or, as I think, it is simply a mathematical construct.

The other thing, not directly in human experience, but deduced by humans as being apparently true, is that despite the fact that everything that has a beginning is also contingent, the universe itself is the grand exception.  So, strangely, the 'universe' has a characteristic when taken in total that it does not have discretely.  In otherwords,  if the universe could be noncontingent while having a beginning, surely this characteristic should be manifested within the universe as well, so that there would be 'pockets' (or whatever) where there are noncontingent events and such.  No one experiences that, even if there are some willing to entertain it.  It is, as I said, an epistemological pitfall.

That leaves us with positing that while we have a postive reason for strongly suspecting that the universe is actually contingent, and not "X", in contrast all we can say is to oppose that conclusion is simply to say that since the laws of causation and physics etc seem to break down at a certain point back in the history of the universe, we are in a position of forced agnosticism about whether or not it is contingent or not.

Maybe- and yet it is certainly reasonable to deduce that a property of the universe in minor scale will be a property of the universe as a whole, so if we are convinced of proposition O above, we have reasonable justification to consider other alternatives.  Ironically, as I say this, on another thread this very sort of sentiment (macro only an accumulation of micro) is being argued vehemently.  But watch!  That sentiment won't apply here, through some magical process.

Anyway, the net conclusion of all this is that given the above I have more reason than not to consider that the universe is not 'X' and to inquire as to the existence of something 'bigger' than the universe.

If folks are with me this far, I'll explore how that inquiry will proceed.

What are you talking about?  I'm definately getting somewhere.  Plus, keep in mind that it was YOU who asked me to go down this road.  I was going to let it slide after BStewart left us.  Conclusion 4 is clearly 'getting somewhere.'

I agree, a 'bridge' needs to be illustrated.  People (you) wanted to know how I got from one place to Christian theism, and so I'M TELLING YOU.

I trust from your response, that you do not object to the argument to this point.

Perhaps you could pick up the pace a little.  At this rate, I won't live to see the end, and it would be so nice if I could convert before the deadline (literally) and make it to heaven.  

it would be nice to get some sort of clear declaration from you as to whether you challenge the argument to this point, especially the new statements, before I go on.

I don't want anyone to accuse me of cutting and running or anything  

X is the sum of all that is real that is less than X. X may also be real in its totality.

Can we agree on that?

X is the sum of all that is real that is less than X. X may also be real in its totality.

But how can such an equation be possible? x=y while at the same time x>y?

Your attempted paraphrase of what I said is not what I said.  What I said is in italics.   There is nothing contradictory in what I said. X is the sum of all real things that are less than X.

To illustrate.   I contain all my cells, but clearly I am a real thing in its totality.  

cimics' cells are real things
cimics = the sum of all parts of cimics
cimics' cells are parts of cimics
cimics is a real thing in its totality

All of these statements are true.

"This quite clearly leads to naive pantheism which, I assume, is not where we are trying to go with this thing"

No, but panENtheism is.

Sntjohnny, I've found a few references to panentheism, but it is missing from all the dictionaries that I have.  Do you accept this Wikipedia definition of panentheism?  It seems to have been written by folks who are enthusiastic believers in the concept, but I'm not sure that they do a great job of distinguishing it from ordinary pantheism.  If you look up pantheism in Wikipedia, it also claims roughly the same historical precedents for the idea.  So I'm a bit confused about the difference.  I'm getting the impression that panentheism was intended to be a kind of theistic version of pantheism--God is immanent in all things but is greater than all things.  Pantheism might be thought of as just the claim that God is immanent but not necessarily greater than all things.  Is that sort of what you have in mind as the difference?

First of all, I'd like to thank you for what is clearly a very sincere inquiry into what I actually mean and believe.  I am always more than happy to respond to such inquiries.  Without vitriol, even.  :)

I have seen the wiki description before.  I think it does a fairly good job.  What it doesn't do a good job of, from a distinctly Christian POV, is showing how the Christianity everywhere (not just Eastern Orthodox, etc) maintains a panentheistic conception of God.  The problem, of course, is that the word wasn't even available for theists to use for a long time and many Christians are unaware of it even now.  While I'm affirming the positives of the wiki, let me quote:

"By this token, the entirety of creation is sanctified, and thus no part of creation can be considered innately evil. This does not deny the existence of evil in a Fallen universe, only that it is not an innate property of creation."

I am not arguing the point, I'm just saying that they did a good job getting this right.  This sentiment is extensively discussed and extended, without using the word, of course, in Augustine's Confessions.  So, its not a recent view.  That is why when Cogito asked me a question I answered with a passage from Ephesians.  I wanted to show that this isn't some ad hoc 20th century apologetical innovation, but always present within Christianity.  That passage again is Ephesians:

"...one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."  4:6

And while I'm at it, Genesis hints at the innate quality issue, "...And God said that it was good."  Gen 1:10,12,18,21,25,31.

Like I said, I'm not debating these points, just congratulating the wiki for getting that part right.  When one compares these views with what the gnostics felt, it becomes much easier to understand how orthodox Christianity differed.

So, on to it.

I can answer your question in two different ways.  In the first way, I can continue in line with my strategy in this thread, slowly building up to a justification not merely of the view that there is a God, but that IF there is a God, he is panentheistic, or I can jump a ton of steps to just state how Christianity views the matter.  So, here's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to make the jump and answer in the second way, but I want you to realize that I think we can get to that 'way' by proceeding along the first way.  I intend to continue on that road.

So, what does Christian panentheism involve?  Essentially, the idea is that anything that is real is sustained wholly and completely by the 'imagining' power of God.  The Holy Spirit is the churchy description of that power.  The mechanism by which the power is exerted is by God's 'speaking'  (see Genesis 1... God 'said,') but the creation does not exist in anyway, and cannot exist in anyway, externally to God, but is sustained by his own deliberate thinking.

See Hebrews 1:3

"...The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word."

Every part of this is important from a Christian panentheistic POV, but for our purposes the 'sustaining all things by his powerful word' is especially so (see also John 1:1-3).

Not everything is an 'exact representation.'  In a panentheistic POV, there is always something 'lost in the translation.'  Even by saying that Jesus is God, as you can see, we are still talking about a 'representation.'  Jesus is God 'thinking' or 'declaring himself' into his own creation.  Its like Shakespeare writing himself in as Hamlet.  However, when we talk about humans having 'free will,' this characteristic can only be some sort of representation of some characteristic of God himself.  A represenation, mind you.  An image.  Like a pyramid is to a triangle, God's 'free will' is to our own free will.

(are you watching this, Zanzagel?)

I use free will, but I could use any example.

Now, this allows us to distinguish between other panentheistic conceptions.  Hinduism, for example, has some panentheists.  Everything is Brahman.  You can have a hundred million little gods because they understand that they are all just different manifestations of Brahman- of course, everything is such a manifestation.  Wiki Brahman.  The difference is that in the Hindu conception, our own distinct personalities are merely illusionary.  In Christian panentheism, our distinct personalities are not illusions, but (for lack of a better analogy) two dimensional represenations of three dimensional realities.

God has extended to certain parts of his creation things like 'free will' and therefore, real personality.  (We don't think he had to.  We just think he did.  That is another difference in Christian panentheism to some other concepts).  Not illusionary free-will, just lesser dimensioned free-will.  Etc, considering other characteristics of humanity, too.

Similarly, some Buddhist conceptions of reality are panentheistic, but once again there are some things that we experience every day that they declare an illusion.  For example, 'pain' is a failure of perspective.  Buddhism is actually very close to gnosticism in this regards.  Suffering in Buddhism is the mark of an ignorant man.  Suffering in Christianity is a tragic and real consequence of a good thing broken, and needing repair.

Taken in this way, three of the world's major religions do really have a stunning agreement in mind about the nature of reality at least in the sense that it is 'panentheistic.'  I have noted a couple of differences above.

Now, this doesn't do a very good job of distinguishing between pantheism and panentheism.  In this regards, I'd better let the Buddhist and Hindu distinguish between the two ideas.  I'll speak to Christianity's panentheism as distinct from pantheism.

Pantheism is of course essentially that everything is 'god' and 'god is everything.'  Panentheism (again, Christianity's conceptualzation) will say that everything is sustained out of the substance of God, but that this substance does not exhaust the fullness of what God is.  The creation is not synonomous with the creator, but the creation is wholly dependant on the creator even for its mere existence.

Contrast to a painter, whose creation is manifested on another external reality, say, the fabric.  A better analogy is the author who creates a story in his mind and sustains it within his imagination.  The story does not exist except by the imagining of the author, and the minute the author ceases to think on it, the story ceases to exist.  The story and the author are not synomomous.   Furthermore, the story is contingent on the author, but the author does not have any NEED for the story.  He can continue on existing without maintaining the story in his head.

Thus, creation can inform us in many ways about the nature of God, but only in a limited fashion.  For example, we may infer from the fact that there apparently exist stable physical laws that God is a God of order, but we will not be able to infer the purpose or point of that order reliably.  Something like that can only be known one way, just like the story characters above could only know the author's purpose in one certain way...

The author would have to reveal it.

I hope this is informational.  Note, I'm not trying to argue it, just explain it.

To illustrate. I contain all my cells, but clearly I am a real thing in its totality.

cimics' cells are real things
cimics = the sum of all parts of cimics
cimics' cells are parts of cimics
cimics is a real thing in its totality

All of these statements are true.

First of all, the term "cimics' cells are real things" is unnecessary unless by it you intend to say that ONLY the cells of which cimics is composed are real things and that other parts of cimics are not real things. Otherwise, we can simply say "all parts of cimics are real things."

So let's do that. Let's say "cimics = the sum of all parts of cimics"

This is analogous to the expression "x = the sum of all real things."

Now it becomes clear that "cimics" cannot also be a "part of cimics" (any more than can "x" be a "real thing" in sntjohnny's argument) for if "cimics" were not only "the sum of all parts of cimics" but also a "part of cimics" then we would have this: "cimics = the sum of all parts of cimics including the part called 'cimics.'"

Obviously this can be true only if 'cimics' is the ONLY part of 'cimics,' for "cimics = cimics plus anything else but zero" is a logical impossibility.

cimics cannot be greater than cimics.