this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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If God can exist without being created by something, why can't the universe?
The argument I've heard is "It must stop somewhere, and whatever it stops at, we'll call that god". It's not a good argument, because it then hopes that you conflate the Judeo-Christian deity with that label and make a whole bunch of assumptions.
It's often paired with woo that falls down to simply asking "Why?", such as "Nothing could possibly be simpler than my deity"
Agreed, the big issue with their argument here is that "god" implies sentience, which isn't something we have any reason to assume exists for whatever's at the "stop somewhere" point. If energy was the starting point for example, I doubt these people would be down with calling heat a god
On the contrary, I’d argue energy mostly meets many of the philosophical criteria for God.
Omnipotence: It literally is what drives stuff to happen.
Omnipresence: It is present to some degree in all things everywhere for all time, though you could argue about vacuum.
Omniscience: See omnipresence, although having knowledge implies some level of consciousness, which is pretty debatable. My psychedelic phase tells me that it’s totally a thing, but I’ll be the first to admit that’s not a rational argument.
Omnibenevolence: I don’t understand why God needs to be good.
I mean your argument stumbles at the exact point of my original comment. We have no reason to think it has any form of consciousness, and therefore no reason to believe it's omniscient. On top of that, even if it was conscious, arguing it's omniscient because it's omnipresent assumes that it isn't a collection of distinct consciousnesses and is instead one giant being, which we also have no reason to believe one possibility over the other.