[Avodah] Emunah, intelligent design, scientific processes

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 16/08/16 08:34, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
>>>> If the question - does Gd exist?, were approached using the
>>>> scientific approach, there is no question that the most elegant
>>>> postulate is, Gd must exist because there must be a beginning
>>>> somewhere - ...
>
> I disagree. This approach invites the question,  "If there must have
> been a beginning somewhere, then where was Gd's beginning?"

The whole point of the argument is that everything we observe is the kind
of thing that needs to be caused by something else, and that thing too, if
it is of the same nature as the things we observe, must have been caused by
something, and so ad infinitum.  Therefore there must exist, somewhere, a
different kind of entity, an entity whose nature *doesn't* require a cause.
It can't be like anything we know, it must be of a completely different
order of existence, and it caused the first thing of the conventional kind,
which in turn caused all the other things.


-- 
Zev Sero               Meaningless combinations of words do not acquire
zev at sero.name          meaning merely by appending them to the two other
                        words `God can'.  Nonsense remains nonsense, even
                        when we talk it about God.   -- C S Lewis