Infinite Regress and God

[MarcusA]

What was before God?

[MarcusA]

Nothing is the default position of the scientific mind, the religious mind has no default position.

[MarcusA]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. - John 1:1 (KJV)

Magnificent nonsense.

[billy rubin]

aquinas was wrong.

[MarcusA]

aquinas was wrong.

How was he wrong other than that he believed infinite regress was logically absurd?

[Old Seer]

What was before God?

If you,re quoting the bible, the material universe formed before the biblical God. An apostle says clearly - first there was the physical and then the spiritual. If the physical came first and it's made of material then material came first. That apostle then asks- "how be it" confirming that is what came first in his understanding. That also confirms that one (a person) cannot exist outside a physical brain.  Therefore there can be no God as commonly believed as an intelligence cannot be in existence 'without' a physical brain. 
What I'm getting at here is, before god as commonly believed,  what came before God was the material universe.

[MarcusA]

Once the religious set up God as a first cause, it is only logical to ask what was before God.

[billy rubin]

aquinas was wrong.

How was he wrong other than that he believed infinite regress was logically absurd?

that is my primary disagreement. an infinite past is no more unlikely than an infinite future.

[MarcusA]

aquinas was wrong.

How was he wrong other than that he believed infinite regress was logically absurd?

that is my primary disagreement. an infinite past is no more unlikely than an infinite future.

So, God the Prime Mover is not absurd in your opinion, is he?

[billy rubin]

no, i said aquinas was wrong.

i think a prime mover is unnecessary.

aquinas's five ways all use the impossibility of infinite regress as an unproven assumption of his arguments for the illustration of "this is what we understand to be god."

if the universe can continue into the future without end, what is so hard about saying that it can extend into the past in a similar manner?

[MarcusA]

no, i said aquinas was wrong.

i think a prime mover is unnecessary.

aquinas's five ways all use the impossibility of infinite regress as an unproven assumption of his arguments for the illustration of "this is what we understand to be god."

if the universe can continue into the future without end, what is so hard about saying that it can extend into the past in a similar manner?

Infinity is beyond me. I look at the stars, and I can't think.