Cosmological argument: Difference between revisions

====Premise 2====

The crucial premise of the argument. Before the [[Big bang theory]] was theorized in the 20th century, scientists and philosophers generally thought that the universe was eternal. An eternal universe did not have a beginning and thus always existed forever into the past. This eliminates the necessary supernatural creative power of a personal being like [[God]]. If there was no beginning to the universe and space-time then divine acts of creation were superfluous. When [[theistic]] characteristics of God are brought under [[materialism]] they deny their source within God, and thus gain natural explanations. Accomplished in the attempt to refute premise 2 by actually making the universe always existing or eternal. The existence of the universe under this paradigm however creates an actual infinite. More specifically the actual infinite is of a specific type called an infinite temporal regress of events. Within completely physical and materialist [[worldviews]] this is a re-occurring issue. Along with being infinite it is also temporal because it relates to causes within time, which likewise also always existed. There then is an infinite temporal regress because it goes into the past forever. The universe must be explained this way in order to avoid an absolute cosmic beginning to all of space-time reality. It requires there exist an actual infinite within natural reality, because past causes and events have to go on forever into the past by definition given an eternal universe. This perennial philosophical problem is not an issue under theistic accounts which produce arguments for transcendent being like a personal God because traditionally God is considered the only non-contingent or always existing, non-caused cause. The infinite regress is stopped by an [[ontological]] commitment to a supernatural personal agent that is the ultimate cause of the existence, and according to the ''kalam'' cosmological argument, the beginning of the universe.

Positing that the universe is eternal then does two things for supporters;