Is God, the Cause of All Causes In The Universe?

[New Eestiball]

That's not an opinion, it's an interpretation.

*waves hands around*
thats the same thing!

to build a rational framework you must have some objective truths to build it upon
to get anywhere, one must make some assumptions
god being the cause of everything is one possible assumption
and what assumptions do you have, if not that science is right?

Bingo. And that the exact reason we have what we call 'science'.

then what are the core assumptions you have, if not that the general framework of science gives good explanations?

[James_xenoland]

Sorry about going beside the point for a second but just wanted to point out one aspect of this specific question. The thing with the "No. There is no evidence for the existence of the God hypothesis or any other gods." is that's there's no evidence of any kind for anything. To know, see or find any is to know, see or find something that happened before space and even time itself existed. (given what we do know about the early universe) Magical strings and foam aside.. science doesn't have much of an idea of where to even begin. Any concept is merely a belief at this point.

[Kalaron]

Sorry about going beside the point for a second but just wanted to point out one aspect of this specific question. The thing with the "No. There is no evidence for the existence of the God hypothesis or any other gods." is that's there's no evidence of any kind for anything. To know, see or find any is to know, see or find something that happened before space and even time itself existed. (given what we do know about the early universe) Magical strings and foam aside.. science doesn't have much of an idea of where to even begin. Any concept is merely a belief at this point.

I would argue that there are more justified beliefs, still. Given everything in the universe, the radiation fields, the "Stars that like to spin around flashing radioactive lasers like toddler trying to blind a pilot", the asteroids, the cold and bleak expanse that separates each star, the fact that we will never, not even if we should learn the secrets of Luminal Travel, be able to explore other galaxies....well, it does kind of feel like we're -at the very least- not being supervised by any particular god.

Ultimately, if people want to believe there's a god behind everything in life, it's whatever. I just don't think it's terribly well-founded from everything that goes on, and that if it isn't seriously segregated from their choices can lead to harm. I can argue with someone all day and beat them over the head with mounds of evidence for positions that I take. I can't argue someone out of "It's bad because God told me so", because the only way for me to even begin to unpack that is to approach the situation from the perspective that
A) Their god is real enough
B) That their god disagrees with what they say it believes
C) Hopefully if I prove it, they won't reveal that my assumption that "God" just means "The metaphysical entity I can invoke to grant my axiomatic beliefs divine righteousness" was correct.

Obviously, B and C are non-starters, because I already know C is correct and their response to B will be some variety of "Nuh-uh", which I can barely fight them on because maybe their god is just a huge piece of shit that likes harm or something, or maybe they have five morbillion scholars that I just don't care to debate theology with, because outside of "Theological debates held by Mongol Warlords where everyone gets ragingly drunk and begins to sing-scream their religious chants at each other", theology is the most boring subject that I know of personally.

[James_xenoland]

Sorry about going beside the point for a second but just wanted to point out one aspect of this specific question. The thing with the "No. There is no evidence for the existence of the God hypothesis or any other gods." is that's there's no evidence of any kind for anything. To know, see or find any is to know, see or find something that happened before space and even time itself existed. (given what we do know about the early universe) Magical strings and foam aside.. science doesn't have much of an idea of where to even begin. Any concept is merely a belief at this point.

I would argue that there are more justified beliefs, still. Given everything in the universe, the radiation fields, the "Stars that like to spin around flashing radioactive lasers like toddler trying to blind a pilot", the asteroids, the cold and bleak expanse that separates each star, the fact that we will never, not even if we should learn the secrets of Luminal Travel, be able to explore other galaxies....well, it does kind of feel like we're -at the very least- not being supervised by any particular god.

Ultimately, if people want to believe there's a god behind everything in life, it's whatever. I just don't think it's terribly well-founded from everything that goes on, and that if it isn't seriously segregated from their choices can lead to harm. I can argue with someone all day and beat them over the head with mounds of evidence for positions that I take. I can't argue someone out of "It's bad because God told me so", because the only way for me to even begin to unpack that is to approach the situation from the perspective that
A) Their god is real enough
B) That their god disagrees with what they say it believes
C) Hopefully if I prove it, they won't reveal that my assumption that "God" just means "The metaphysical entity I can invoke to grant my axiomatic beliefs divine righteousness" was correct.

Obviously, B and C are non-starters, because I already know C is correct and their response to B will be some variety of "Nuh-uh", which I can barely fight them on because maybe their god is just a huge piece of shit that likes harm or something, or maybe they have five morbillion scholars that I just don't care to debate theology with, because outside of "Theological debates held by Mongol Warlords where everyone gets ragingly drunk and begins to sing-scream their religious chants at each other", theology is the most boring subject that I know of personally.

Oh yeah, understand. I stated that to point out the true.. extent of the question in its entirety, not in defense of any one or type of belief. Keeping my, and opinion in general, out of it.

[Fractalnavel]

I would add that even if we do not and cannot ever know the specific rules, we do know the meta that any set of physical rules will follow. The anthropic principal guarantees that. The concept of causation itself is one of those: "if this then that". If you interpose any kind of non-physical interaction, all bets are off - and we would not be here talking now. The only way around that is the the trivial (and absurd) "god made it so it would seem that way", in which case we are back to whatever moment we are in being created just so from whole cloth, with no connection to any other moment except insofar as that god deems it so, as he continues to create more moments. Or rather, the mind of the human invoking that 'explanation'. That's all we have of god - human imagination, and from there it serves all the other motivations of our species, noble or base.

[Sobeiska]

I'm separating the opinion of a theory and the opinion of scientific consensus. All science is opinion. I dont need to explain that science is our understanding of the world we get to inhabit.

to build a rational framework you must have some objective truths to build it upon
to get anywhere, one must make some assumptions
god being the cause of everything is one possible assumption
and what assumptions do you have, if not that science is right?

And is the assumption that god is real as simple to justify as phenomena that have been documented, repeated, and studied for centuries? Scientific theory is not merely hypothesis but the continued work from that, using experimentation and observation, to build a reasoned and evidenced world view. To suggest that science is merely opinion is to suggest that reality is entirely a subjective matter with no grounding even in the flawed perception of observers within it; at this point you cannot have a reasonable argument and you're working purely off your own opinion instead of engaging with a modern framework. You needn't bother arguing with anyone else at that point since you could simply take the effort to not care if nothing needs any attachment to reality to have meaning or truth.