How can the universe always be said to have existed, when there is nothing in the universe that always existed? People, plants, planets - all these things come into existence and then decay and disappear. In other words, every thing in the universe needs a cause for its existence. God, on the other hand, needs no such cause. This is not because he is "causa sui" or "self-caused"(an absurd notion, for how can something that has no being produce it own being?), but rather, he is "sine causa" or "WITHOUT a cause". Something, after all, always had to have existed. This is the Uncaused (call it God), not the Caused (Universe), which is inherently unstable and subject to flux.
Scott from Ireland.
Cosmological Jeopardy: I'll answer your answers with questions... Why is it that something--or even just a multitude of strings of overlapping different things--needs always to have existed? Is it that it makes no sense to speak of existence if there are not particular things that do so? And even if we accept this claim, and that the existence of something(s)without a cause is the way to honor it, why does this thing (or things) need to be God and not the universe itself? Is the universe not particular enough?
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