Exactly. I see no difference between saying "The universe has always existed" and "God has always existed." In either case you have something that wasn't created. Atheists just have one less step. There is no way to know for certain what was going on billions of years ago, but my opinion is that matter has always existed in some form or other. That seems to me the most logical conclusion.

This thread is Jason's baby, but I like this topic.

From Ragnar:

"Exactly. I see no difference between saying "The universe has always existed" and "God has always existed.""

Right.

"In either case you have something that wasn't created. Atheists just have one less step."

Wrong, and contradictory of what you just said.  Either there is no difference, or there is a difference.  Both are positing the existence of something without a cause.  Or, the word I prefer to use is 'contingent' to escape the semantic obfuscation that these conversation tend to descend into.  So, with that modification, we are both positing something that is non-contingent.  You don't have 'one less step.'  You simply identify your non-contingent thing differently.

Further, in response to both you and Copernicus, your minimalistic definition of 'atheism' I'm afraid is not as widely accepted even by atheists.  Having spent more than a decade intensley engaging atheists, I know that they come in all stripes and types, and the conglomerate POV does not merely deny the existence of God, but as Ragnar JUST DID, posits opposite, positve assertions.  He said:

"There is no way to know for certain what was going on billions of years ago, but my opinion is that matter has always existed in some form or other. That seems to me the most logical conclusion."

That is a positive claim, and requires defense.  Its too bad that in trying to offer a rational justification for his apparent streamlined 'non-belief' he does what atheists often do, and which Cogito did, "it's nonsensical to say that something might have caused something else to occur before time existed. From this it follows that the universe may be uncaused."

Both these ideas essentially puts the question out reach for any kind of scrutiny at all.  So, if you guys actually believed this stuff, you'd have to confess that the 'most logical conclusion' would be that you must remain fundamentally agnostic about the proper identity of the ultimate regression in non-contingent realities.  But NOOOOOOOOOOO.  You want your cake, and you want to eat it too.  You want to say that atheists ONLY believe there is no God or gods, and then pretend you have your own assertions that require defense.

At the very least, saying 'this is the most logical conclusion' requires demonstration, does it not?  How it is to be demonstrated when 'no one can know' or 'it is nonsensical to discuss' violates my golden rule of epistemology.  In your headlong rush to be dismissive of theists (this is what I take Jason to be objecting to) you fundamentally call into question knowledge itself.

I think you guys should be honest with yourselves and the world.  Admit that you reject theism but its really only just based on a hunch.  You have no way of knowing which is the identity of the ultimate non-contingent reality, and you think it 'non-sensical' to consider anyway.  With the intellectual parlor trick removed, and atheists coming on board to embrace what has been exposed on this thread, by three atheists in three quick consecutive posts without any effort by anyone else, how rational do you think atheism will appear to most people first considering the problem?

I'm going to pick on one word in your first post, johnny, and build off of that. You can't "demonstrate" what happened billions of years ago, as I already said. While it is true that atheists are not required to say anything about whether the universe has always existed or not, I think it is intellectually lazy to remain agnostic on this point. It is simple logic. If you believe there are no gods, then it follows that matter has had to have always existed, because there would be no one around to create it.

I think when atheists talk about the beginning of the universe, they are thinking of the big bang. It also depends on what your definition of a universe is. I think few people consider that the big bang had to come out of something, which indicates that matter existed before the big bang. Even if it was the size of an atom, that is still a universe - a universe the size of an atom.

About your second post, it is absurd to comment on the fact of atheists disagreeing. I'm sure you hate it when people bring up the Crusades, or Christians persecuting pagans, or point at Islamic terrorists as a reason for why religion is evil. It is the same tactic. Where atheists differ from theists in this regard, is that atheists have never gone to war with each other over philosophical disagreements.

I disagree that the presuppositions that a god exists and that the universe exists are the same thing. The notion that the universe exists is self-evident. The notion that a god exists is not.

Knowledge claims made about "reality" are implicitly based on the presuppositions that our universe is external (i.e., not just subjective mental constructs), that it is independent (i.e., not directly controlled by our will), and that our senses are generally reliable. The notion that we need yet another presupposition to explain those presuppositions is absurd. The entire point of a presupposition is that knowledge cannot extend beyond it. Yet theists for a transparent reason take the presupposition that our universe is an independent external reality and posit another presupposition to explain that presupposition!

"I disagree that the presuppositions that a god exists and that the universe exists are the same thing. The notion that the universe exists is self-evident. The notion that a god exists is not."

You are failing to grasp the true nature of the claim.  The identical claim is "Something non-contingent exists."

No more, no less.

The notion that the universe exists may be self-evident, but I'm afraid I don't particularly care.  You will recall that just a moment ago you were pointing out that most scientists believe it to be non-sensical to talk about a 'before' our universe.  Ie, the Big Bang.  Ie, the Universe appeared to have a beginning.  Ie, it appears to be contingent.  Contingent on WHAT is irrelevant to whether it is contingent at all.  Ie, if there must be something non-contingent, your self-evident universe appears not to be it.

Do you think there must be something that is non-contingent, or not?

So, I am nonplussed by arguments that the universe's existence is self-evident while at the same time it is allowed as probable that nothing can be said at all about reality .000000001010010101000345402435 'before' the big bang.

How many things with beginnings can you think of are non-contingent?

"Is it your claim then that the universe is contingent and that a god is the "something noncontingent"? If so, upon what is that claim based? Not on experience. Is there an a priori argument that shows that something noncontingent must necessarily exist?"

I am not prepared at this point to lay out for you the basis for the claim.  Clearly my view is that the universe is contingent, and I think the fact that the universe has a beginning- so saith the scientists- my argument is, at the very least, consistent with the facts.  If scientists were still entertaining steady-state models, this obvious corroboration would not be available to me.  More on this.

At anyrate, my point is that the fundamental claim is still the same:  something is non-contingent.

""How many things with beginnings can you think of are non-contingent?""
"What does this have to do with the argument? "

The universe has a beginning.  If our a posteriori data all indicates that things with beginnings are contingent, it rationally follows that the universe itself- if it had a beginning- is also contingent.  

I'm not laying out the overall case for 'why God' instead of 'why universe,' just pointing out that on the face of things at this point, positing God as the non-contingent thing is at least as rational- if not more so- than positing the universe as the noncontingent 'thing.'

"If everything within the universe is caused, that cannot be the first reason to believe that the universe itself is caused. As I mentioned earlier, it may be that the universe is uncaused. We just don't know."

And as I said before, your escape from these arguments should put you in the category of agnosticism, not atheism.  "We just don't know," and the obvious one in this case, "We can't know" (for how can the thing inside the set, obeying the rules on the inside, possibly know the rules applied to the set itself, right?) are not strong statements.  They are not rational arguments against theism.  They are not even rational arguments for atheism.  Your approach, which we see was Ragnar's as well, was to put the whole issue outside of even logically possible scrutiny.

""Do you think there must be something that is non-contingent, or not? ""
"Must be? No, I do not think that it is a logically necessity that a noncontingent must exist."

So, in your view, it is a possible feature of reality that non-contingent realities can materialize without cause?

"Correct me if I'm wrong but your basis for holding such a belief seems to rest on the assumption that an infinite regress of contingent beings with no beginning is an impossibility. If so, then how is it possible that an infinite being exists with no beginning?"

Your wording is confusing to me, but I think I get the gist of it.  I do think that an infinite regress of contingent 'realities' ('realities' keeps us from having to deal with objections later to come to 'beings' or 'entities') is impossible.  How does one jump out of a bottomless pit?  Something must be non-contingent.

Whether this is God, or the universe, or the multiverse, or whatever, something must be non-contingent.  I am awaiting your answer to the question about materialization without cause before explaining what I think to be the ramifications of concluding otherwise.

Ragnar said... "Is it your claim then that the universe is contingent and that a god is the "something noncontingent"?"

Let's go one by one with this paragraph.

No.  Not 'a god' but THE God, as best revealed in the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures.  I want to be very clear on this because I do not have any belief whatsoever that any 'god,' (as you probably would define it) was or is in any way involved in the creation and sustainment of the Universe.  But other than that, yes, I claim that the Universe, all matter, and all sentience are contingent, to varying degrees, on God's sustenance and creation.  God is noncontingent, eternally existent both forward and backward, and is at the highest possible level of all existent things, physical, metaphysical, or other.

"If so, upon what is that claim based?"

Reason, revelation, and more reason.

"Not on experience."

If you mean experience in a scientific-type manner, like experimental results, then no.  But of course, neither is your claim that the Universe is eternal based on any experience.  I fully, FULLY believe that the Universe is contingent on something Metaphysical, as did many Atheistic philosophers throughout time.  Leibniz, Heidegger, Plato, and more.  Actually plato wasn't really an atheist.  I take that one back.

"Is there an a priori argument that shows that something noncontingent must necessarily exist?"

It is eminently self evident, unless you truly believe that something can literally come from nothing.  The closest you can come to that is Quantum Theory, but that really doesn't help your case because it really doesn't assume something from nothing.