Negative atheism? (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, December 26, 2014, 08:28 (3410 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: How can it be illogical when you yourself concede that an eternal God is unlikely to have twiddled his divine thumbs, doing nothing for ever and ever until approx. 14 billion years ago? 
DAVID: We do not know if we are the first universe or one that follows several or many. Judging by this universe one lasts about 100 billion years. We have no idea if God waited for an eternity to produce just this one. Speculation does not advance the discussion, because, bluntly, we have no idea what we are talking about. I feel we can only use what we know. That is the kind of evidence I've used to make up my mind.-Thank you for another excellent reply. Speculation that this universe is the consequence of logical planning by a universal intelligence that has existed forever and about which we know nothing does not advance the discussion, because, bluntly, we have no idea what we are talking about. I too feel we can only use what we know, and what we know is that we and the universe exist at the moment (assuming we are not an illusion). That's it. However, if it's OK for you to speculate, it's OK for me to speculate, and if we didn't, we wouldn't have a forum, would we? It's also OK for you to make up your mind, but not OK for you to assume that your decision is any more logical than anyone else's, as below: -TONY: Except that if it were non-conscious it would have no capacity to plan, and so you are right back to square one with randomness and the likelihood of success, much less success that is a coherent and balanced as what we see around us.-DAVID: You are logical, dhw grasps at straws.-Here is the logic: something cannot come from nothing. Something must have existed for ever (= a first cause). We don't know what that something might be. If our universe had a beginning, it is perfectly logical to speculate (a) that the first cause is capable of making universes, and (b) that ours would not have been its only product during its eternal existence. Eternal production of limitless universes would lessen the odds against one particular combination of matter producing life. Please note: this is a hypothesis, not a statement of belief.
 
Why is this hypothesis less logical than the following: we don't know what preceded our universe, but our universe contains intelligent life, intelligent life requires planning, and therefore earthly life must have been planned by a form of eternally intelligent life which preceded our universe but did not need planning?