[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
It’s not a non sequitur in the slightest. We were discussing the suspicious fact that “miracles”', always have alternate natural explanations, and true miracles, the kind that could only be explained supernaturally, never occur, even once, in a setting that can be reliably verified.
[/quote]
I dispute this, but in order to avoid the conclusion you accept infinite casual regress as logical, give power to the first law of thermodynamics to say that matter and energy have always existed yet ignore the obvious conclusion the second law of thermodynamics gives from your premise that energy and matter have always existed which is the universe would have always been at maximum entropy. You also have propose laws which are contingent upon the nature for which they are laws to say that a contingent universe is non contingent.
Secondly your adherence to scientism that only science is capable of truth fails on its own terms for it cannot be scientifically tested, yet is actually a worldview. It also leads you to apply it to things outside it limits and invoke naturalism of the gaps. “Hmm it logically follows that God is the only reason why something exist rather than nothing at all, ill just use naturalism of the gaps to argue for the possibility of an infinite casual regress.”
Thomas Huxley? I most certainly liked his grandson’s book “Brave New World” yet I think he was amazingly honest for the reason for his atheism. Here are two quotes by Aldous Huxley.
“Science does not have the right to give to me my reason for being. But I am going to take science’s view because I want this world not to have meaning. A meaningless world frees me to pursue my own erotic and political desires.”
“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves… For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”[/quote]
I’m not sure which of your statements of my beliefs to begin with, but
let’s start with infinite regress.
An infinite regress is only illogical if you assume that everything
had a beginning.
Of course, nobody assumes this. Creationists try to dodge the bullet
by saying god created the universe, but they are unable to explain
what created god.
They get around this by asserting that god is an Uncaused Cause.
However, insisting on an Uncaused Cause acknowledges that not
everything had a beginning. At least one thing, in this case the
mysterious Uncaused Cause, must have had no beginning.
How is that any different from arguing that matter/energy had no beginning?
In both cases, there is no logical conflict from infinite regress,
because neither case assumes that everything has a beginning.[/quote]
An infinite casual regress is always illogical because it describes a beginingless series of events in which an event could never come to pass for it has been preceded by an infinite series of events which each of those events have been preceded by an infinite series of events.
At first glance it seems we both avoid the problem of ICR by positing a first cause and just differ on what it is. The problem with positing matter and energy to be the first cause is that they are subject to time and if they have always existed in time then you run into an infinite causal regress as to in what form matter and energy took on in a certain point in time.
Secondly if one ignores the problem I pointed out that the current form matter and energy are in is impossible to get to if matter and energy have had a beginingless series of events in which they change their form from. One will still has to deal with the second law of thermodynamics and why everything isn’t already at maximum entropy.
[quote]
I’m happy to talk about the other ideas you brought up if you like,
but let’s start with this.
On the statements from Aldous Huxley, I couldn’t disagree more. I
think a life without meaning is an empty and unfulfilling waste of
existence.
Of course, I don’t believe you need priests or holy books to tell you
what the meaning of your life is. As an agnostic, my life is every bit
as rich and meaningful as when I was a believer, and in some ways
moreso.[/quote]
I am glad you don’t find life meaningless, yet purpose is intrinsic to meaning and if the universe and our lives are to have any meaning it is only found in God. I am interested, when you say you are an agnostic do you find it possible that God exist?
