Yes it has. We know know infinity does not need a first cause. There doesn;t need to be a first unmoved mover. I wonder if you even understand what Aquinas and Crag Hack are talking about, if you can't discuss it..

Lets take his first argument. The universe had a beginning...ok. From that he somehow follows there must be a "transcentent timeless reality" from where the universe came. That is simply wrong, because there must not be,see above.. Then he gets even weirder by saying there is some "enormously powerful entity" in this transcendent reality. And then this entity suddenly turns into a " unembodied mind" without further explanation.
There could be all kinds of crap in that transcendent reality, if it would exist. It is pure speculation mixed with outdated ideas to impress fox news viewers.

Even you must see this is BS.

We can do the other 4,too, if you wish, but it only gets worse.

This is by far the most common mistake. The first cause is not first chonologically, but first ontologically. In other words, there can't been an infinite chain of secondary causes with a primary cause. For instance, a hand moving a stick, moving a rock, moving a leaf. Without the primary cause of the hand, none of the secondary causes in the chain move. Aquinas' first argument does not start out by claiming the universe had a beginning, and in fact, at no point did he ever make that claim. WLC makes the claim that the universe has a beginning and back it up with scientific and philosophical arguments. If it had a beginning, then it had a cause. He then makes arguments about what attributes this cause would have. If it created space and time, then it is not dependent on space and time for its existence, so it must transcend those things. Matter exists in space and time, so it must be immaterial. If it had the power to create the universe, then it would be enormously powerful. This is pretty straightforward stuff. And this is where your show that you haven't really bothered to try to understand the argument.

This is like a paragraph from Planescape Torment, quite interesting really.

Do you have a source that explains all this in details?

Yes, but this isn't a logic of a philosophy exercise, the question is what is it actually like in real life.

That's what it comes down to. There's little substantive difference between people who believe in the Christian God and individuals that believe in the underpants gnomes. Neither have any actual evidence backing the assertion, but in one case you can walk around owning up to it without people looking at you funny and the other you're clearly joking.

And why is this thread still going?
Honestly, this is pretty much a wall of bullshit.

At present we don't know whether or not time is infinite, we just know that about 12 bn years ago there was a big bang. We may eventually pierce the vale and discover what happened before, if anything, but any argument that side steps the issue of time being more or less linear does require a substantial amount of support. Time loops may be fine for the purposes of Hindu views on life, but they aren't really substantiated as far as I've ever heard.

In other words, you're making all sorts of logical leaps with this post that it's difficult to imagine that you're even thinking about this. The earliest thing that scientists have any knowledge of is the big bang, and there is at present no particular reason to believe that time will loop around on itself to get us back there. In fact the last I heard, there was growing consensus for the open universe models where matter spreads out as far as it can for all eternity. Rather than being pulled back together to get back to the big bang.

Didn't we create time? And calendars? And adjust them and tweak them to fit our needs? I just don't personally see how "time" can be considered a fixed, viable "thing". It may be how we see things, but I don't think cave men said "It's six o'clock; I better make breakfast." :-)

Rather primitive way of looking at don't you think? In physics I believe it's regarded as a relative dimension. I have never heard of anyone managing to prove time is absolute or something fixed. Gravity affects time for example and I believe the common consesus regarding big bang is that time didn't "exist" "before", it came along with it.

There's a large section in philosophy about it too but I barely know anything about that. I believe this is a decent source about it.

This one also discusses various models for the universe:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-ultimate-question-of-origins-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe

If an argument uses true premises and has a valid form, then the conclusion that necessarily follows is what it actually is like in real life. (www.dictionary.com)
ev·i·dence [ev-i-duhns]
noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.

Has the Bible made clear or indicated to people that God exists? If so, then according the definition #2, it is evidence for the existence of God. If you can't tell why Christians believe that God exists and don't believe that underpants gnomes do, then I can only assume that you're ignoring vast quantities of historical evidence. It's true that it's possible that time could be infinite, but to the best of our scientific and philosophical knowledge, the universe has a beginning, so we should be willing to consider the implications of that. I'm not sure where you're getting time loops from. I encourage you to check out this article:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-ultimate-question-of-origins-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe

There is a difference between measuring time and creating time.

No, it doesn't. That's why lawyers can form any argument they want to. It might use true premises and be of valid form, but it does not follow that what follows necessarily is true. There are plenty of times when the premises themselves are not sufficient to describe the situation with sufficient clarity so as to lead to one and only one conclusion. In most cases there are multiple legitimate conclusions.

I'm not really surprised though. Like I indicated previously, you're being rather selective with you're particular choice of facts and logical leap.

As for evidence,the Bible is not evidence of anything. South Park would then have to be evidence of underpants gnomes, I think you're smart enough to see the problem with that. Both of those were created by humans, neither one of them is evidence of what your reasoning suggests.

As for the time loops, the only way in which you could have creation created after the beginning would be some sort of time loop. And quite frankly any other possibility is just an effort to put mascara on a pig in an effort to get people to stop noticing that it's a pig.

If you're going to put up walls of bullshit, at least put up a halfway decent argument. There's more holes in your arguments than gangsters on Valentines day.

But this is the discussion. If you don't want to take part, then by all means, leave the thread to its demise.
Saying "It's wrong but I can't be bothered to either a) explain it; or b) link to someone who can" is neither a logical argument nor very helpful. [this applies to a few people in this thread who'd rather say "it's obvious BS, but if you can't understand that, I won't explain it to you"].

Why? Would it so alter Picard if he were a theist? (edit: 2nd conditional grammar error)
Then again, I only got the impression that he was referring to the concept of God (as Q had claimed to be 'God'), not necessarily a personal belief. (ie he was saying "I know what God is meant to be and you don't fit that") The 'leap' is that 'personality' = 'soul'
I know that the "who am I?" philosophical discussion has been going on for a long time but it doesn't preclude a soul to say that a person can change. (Though personally, I don't think I'm a fundamentally different person from my 8 year old self. More experienced, more confident, less wise ( ;) ) but ultimately the same person. YMMV Link to the science/article explaining the rebuttal of the premise? (I'm genuinely interested).

Well, there is a substantive difference in that the Underpants Gnomes (who are, admittedly, possessed of an uncanny logic) don't have several books, by several different authors, claiming that they are, in fact, real. I'd go so far as to say that there will never be such books about said Gnomes. If there were to be, then it would at least merit investigation. Nonetheless, since the Underpants Gnomes are of this world, their lack of existence could be traced to their logical impossibility in this world. (though who knows? ;p ) because people keep arguing *shrug* I believe Einstein said that time loops, though not restricted by his theories, were unlikely. Yes, which is an argument that the universe may be infinite in the future but not in the past (and therefore infinite but not eternal).
If we could show that the universe would eventually crush in on itself in a Gnab Gib (thank you Zaphod Beeblebrox), then we could hypothesize that the universe is eternal and therefore doesn't need an external cause. Since it seems that the universe will end in entropy, it can't have an infinite past since the entropy would have already happened. (this doesn't preclude other causes by itself - hence WLC having 7 arguments that combine to suggest the Christian God as the Creator).

1.) All men are mortal.
2.) Socrates was a man.
3.) Therefore, Socrates was mortal.

If the two premises are true, then the conclusion logically necessarily follows and tells us something about real life, namely that Socrates was mortal. Furthermore, that's the only conclusion that can be logically reached from those two premises. I think you're confusing interpreting evidence, which can lead to a number of conclusions, with a logical argument, which is not open to interpretation. If you think I'm ignoring any facts, then please point them out. I showed how it was evidence by definition, so your disagreement is not with me, but with the dictionary. If there is no evidence for God, then you need to explain how it is possible to form an uncaused belief. I think all beliefs have causes and the cause of a belief is what makes clear or indicates to someone that it is true. If someone watches an episode of South Park and forms the belief that underpants gnomes exist, then the only way I see to account for the formation of their belief is that they interpreted the episode as evidence that indicated to them that it was true. It's always possible to misinterpret evidence to indicate something is true that isn't actually true, so just saying there is evidence for something isn't the same as saying it is true. So you're free to think that the Bible is insufficient evidence to justify your own belief, but it is illogical to deny that others have used it as evidence to justify their beliefs. Sorry, I'm still not following how time loops got involved.

It feels pretty damn inpolite to just ignore the effort Soyeong put into explaining the issue. And as I said,
"If you interpret this as 'He doesn't know what he's talking about', so be it"
I just don't want to get into it. See what hedwards is doing right now, it's pointless.

If you want to say there is no point, then you're going to have to explain how it is possible. Unpointed points all have underlying points that make the pointless things pointed and pointful. If you see someone making a pointless point, then that is evidence that there is a point. So you're free to look at his point as pointless, but it is illogical to deny that it is being used as an argument to justify a point. :O

Paraphrasing from Mr. above for silliness, cause you know how they like their semantics. :P