IS GOD THE ONLY BRUTE FACT?

THE TRICK WITH A GOD WHO WAS ALWAYS THERE
 
Religion says that the universe cannot have come from nothing unless there is a being who was always in existence who made all things. So the presumption is that all beings came from nothing except one for it was always there.

The Church will say that God is indeed "always" there but there is more to it than that.  There was a chance or a logical possibility that he might not have been there.  The alternative view is that he is a brute fact that simply had to exist.  There was no chance at all that there might not have been a God.

Let us analyse that.  God always being means one of these and only one.  He might not have existed.  Or there was no might about it for he had to exist the way if water is boiling it cannot be ice.  This is the view that it is illogical to say that it is lucky God exists for there might have been no God.  God always existing does not mean he is not created for continuous creation means there is something there but just no beginning.  But this logic is assumed.  Believers are not working out logically that God must exist but saying they cannot do it but God can for he is smarter than us.  So it is talking about a logic that we do not understand.  To say God logically has to exist is not to claim to understand how.
 
Even if something was always there like God it does not follow it could not come from nothing. Hypothetically it could be true that if there was no God he could come from nothing. Why? Because the doctrine that God never came into existence is still saying he comes from nothing. To understand this you must grasp that God is in eternity and with eternity there is no time or past or future. There is only the present. So God always existing is compatible with him coming out of nothing. It is just that the coming from nothing is eternal and timeless.

Does God exist because he commanded himself to exist? If something cannot come from nothing unless it is commanded to come, then did God command himself to exist? He must have. But that would be impossible. If he can make himself, how do we know that all that exists didn't make itself as well? Magic seems to be based on the notion of things making themselves if called to by a spell.
 
God did pop into existence in some sense when there might have been nothing. Even if he always existed and causes himself like religion says what we have is the popping into existence but this popping has happened in the timelessness of eternity so it does not look like popping at first glance but it is. If a cat popped into existence this moment and you did away with the past and the future it would not look like the cat had popped into existence for it would always exist in the timeless sense but it did pop. It is a perfect analogy for what happened with God. So God popped but the present he popped into was one without a past or future which gives him the illusion of a being that did not pop.
 
The question, "Why is there anything when there might have been nothing at all?" seems to make you want to answer, "God the creator is the answer." But it in fact is a lookalike answer. It is saying something to give the misleading impression that there is an answer. It is a trick.
 
1 is 1. That is a brute fact. You don't ask why 1 is 1. It just is.
 
If there were nothing at all that would be a brute fact. There would be no point in the question being asked, "Why is there nothing?" There is no answer. There should be none. At least it proves that things can be true for no reason. It proves brute facts may exist.
 
Religion says that God is a brute fact. He is who he is. He exists because he exists.
 
They say that God must have been the first cause and the one who makes all things exist because it’s the only answer for the question of why is there something rather than nothing. But if God is the answer then we are left with the unanswerable question, “Why is there a God when there could have been nothing?” That question is the one. If God is all that matters his creation does not really matter for it depends entirely on him. Thus we should not even be interested in why there is a universe instead of nothing. We should only care that there is a God instead of no God. That is what we should ask. And God is not necessarily a creator. So creation does not come into it.

The answer to why there is a God is that God is a brute fact. But is that answer correct? Why not say the universe is a brute fact?

Forget God. It would be better to observe that the world and ourselves exist and to ask why they exist. To bring in another complication God only makes the question more difficult for we have to account for him when it is hard enough to account for the world and ourselves.
 
For religion, God is not the only brute fact. It also says his perfect goodness is a brute fact. He didn't make himself good. He just is good. Also, his goodness is not just perfect. It is infinite. So the infinity of his goodness is a brute fact as well.
 
It is bizarre how we can worship God for being good when he didn't make himself good. The Mormons seem to be making sense that a God worth worshipping has to make himself good. The Mormon God used to be a man and conquered his own sin to become perfect and evolves forever in power and intelligence and goodness.
 
Religion is saying it is good for God to exist and good for God to be good so goodness is a brute fact. It is goodness that is the brute fact - not God or anything else.
 
Existence is good so existence is a brute fact. Religion says that even suffering is good in the sense that it is goodness that is in the wrong place. Evil is a lack of good, it says. So even evil is good in that sense.

It is good for the universe to exist so why can't its existence then be a brute fact?
 
The brute fact argument does not give us reason to think God exists. It is about good not God.
 
God is not a brute fact as far as we are concerned for we cannot prove his existence. Thinking you can prove it is not the same as proving it. As long as you think it you cannot be proving it.
 
We can believe in goodness - we do not need to imagine there is a God in order to believe in goodness.
 
Good is a brute fact - even if there was no creation it is good that there are no people around to suffer. Goodness is more important than God. If you had a choice which would you choose? Goodness we hope! So why care so much that God exists if good is a brute fact?
 
All criticisms of the brute fact data are based on the notion that there are no laws without a lawgiver. But who made that law? If there is no lawgiver then who made the law that there is nobody to make laws? No matter what you do, you end up assuming that it is possible for self-existent laws to be. You are assuming that they really exist. The laws are not made but are brute facts.

Religion says God being the cause of all matters for without him there would be nothing and he is the source of all good.  That seems to be a mythological way of saying, "Good made all things."  They confuse morality with God and assert that morality made all things!

The argument that God is morality and thus this God is a brute fact misfires.  It is incoherent.
 
When you find a sick baby all alone, your feelings will urge you to help. That is more important than any moral code saying you should help. Religion however cares more about the code. That is actually immoral - if a person helps because he wants do who cares if he doesn't understand morality as long as he helps? Religion argues, "If there is no God then there is no obligation to help the baby." But that argument is saying we have an obligation to admit that there is no morality if there is no God. It contradicts itself. The rightness of helping the baby is a brute fact. Right and wrong are brute facts so we do not need God. Religion argues that morality is a person and that person is God so to show morality is a brute fact without God is to show that God is not needed as a brute fact.
 
They say objective morality is the true morality.  This is against relativists who say that it is nonsense and that morality is just preferences and feelings.  Now, if morality really is objective then what comes first? Intending to be objectively moral or being objectively moral?  What if it had to be one or the other?  Clearly you are regarded as a good person even if you fire a bomb at innocent people just because you were expecting a mob to come to your house to murder your children.  You cause mayhem and death and are still considered good inside where it counts.  The real goal of the preachers of morality is to feel good about intentions regardless of the harm done and good intentions do wreak a lot of destruction.  They do more harm than evil itself does.  So the answer is that they care about trying to be really moral than about morality being real.  If it is one or the other, they will sacrifice the latter.

We find that believers in God show that whatever the brute fact is, it is not a moral God.

Believer or not, you believe in brute facts. You know they exist even if you don't know what they are.

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THE WEB
www.colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/Tooley2.html
THE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Michael Tooley.
http://www.nd.edu/~rpotter/courses/finitism.htm
FINITISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, R Dennis Potter,
www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august97/barker.html
THE FREE WILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD by Dan Barker