Quote Originally Posted by Will View Post
That's still a category mistake. Things in nature are IN nature; they are not natures themselves. If events in nature must have a cause, that says nothing about the whole of nature, or whether or not all natures have a cause.
Things in nature are not nature? That's silly. When an apple falls from a tree this is not nature working? I am talking about the universe. You're proposing the whole composite of the universe doesn't have cause? If so, then it was always existing? But that can't be because man would not still be sinning (Step 1). And, if you want to say it happened by itself from nothing, nothing is still nothing and never becomes something (Step 2). Think about how absurd your argument is. It loses no matter how you look at it. That's why the 4 Steps are so powerful. You haven't even gotten to Step 3 and Step 4, so you are still a babe in learning. Eventually when you realize you can't get around the first 2 Steps, you start moving to Step 3 and 4. Then 4 brings around to Step 1 again. It is a perfect looping proof. I like being challenged on it. Keeps me sharp. On my toes.

You want to propose other natures without causes? Then if they always existed man would not still be sinning to the extent he still does. The composites of the universe all require a cause, for whatever begins to exist needs a cause (Kalam's).

Of course. I'm not suggesting that something came from nothing. If you want to know what I believe, I'd say that everything was packed into a nearly infinitely dense point. "Before" that, I don't know what happened. It's difficult to say "before", though, as time didn't exist before space.
Lots of atheists believe things like radioactive decay, particle pairing, Bell's Theorem and vacuuming (fancy phrases they throw around) come from nothing yet they can never actually prove it. So understand this is an approach you can easily slip into, especially when you previously argued the universe had a beginning but was not created. How is this possible if there is not an eternity of past, which is itself impossible?

When you say you "don't know what happened" that's shutting your mind down to the evidence we have already discussed. What happened before singularity was the uncreated created and intelligently designed since singularity, being nature, requires a cause, and there cannot be an eternity of the past of cause and effects, for man would not still be sinning.