[quote]kamui wrote:
Ok. I will try to answer in a way that you will hopefully be able to manage.
Note : The text in the “grey boxes” are quotes of things you said.
You yourself spoke about “a book written 2000 years ago”.
pat quoted that and answered it.
-i’m not a christian
-In a christian perspective, the New Testament is not a Bible, but a part of the Bible.
Pat isn’t a young earth creationist. You’re wasting your time here. And ours.
God is not meant to be “a way of explaining the observed events”.
Religion is not Science.
If you want to argue against something, try to understand it, without reducing it to what you think or want it to be.
Yep. This is why i’m still waiting to see all the “professional helpers” you keep speaking about.
You know, the ones who cure religion.
[quote]
There is no evidence of your god, anywhere, other than dumb people saying I believe.[/quote]
Ok. Now prove that evidence is the only criterium of truth. [/quote]
Religion is a symptom of mental illness. The mental illness can be treated.
Again, the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim, not the person who questions the claim.
Those who believe in idiotic sky fairies need to prove it exists.
As a rational person, if the evidence exists, I am willing to change my position. As a human, this is the only valid approach.
Rational person he says LOL! Evidence LOL! We have another live one here. He’s gonna mystify me with abuncha highfalutin, erudite, scientific blah blah blah when he can’t even be sure if 2+2=4.
This video was really good. The ideas that truth is truth regardless of it’s source and there are not contradictory truths explains my views very well. If there are two contradictory truths as explanation of a single entity, one of them is wrong. Or our understanding is flawed. These are things I have been espousing for many years on these forums. Of course Aquinas’s work on contingencies are also something very near and dear to my heart.
That is why I said, you don’t need faith to know God exists. Logic tells us that He must. It takes faith to believe God is who he says he is in the scriptures and to trust him implicitly without the benefit of sensory interaction with Him.
You can believe in the Uncaused-cause as a stagnant lifeless being who started and left the creation to just follow the ‘rules’ put forth by creation, which is what the deists believe. Of course, that’s a partial denial of what the Uncaused-cause must be. For to be what it is, it must possess something like a will, and there is nothing to suggest will died off in the process of initial cause. That’s imposing a temporal limitation on something that by definition cannot be limited in such a way.
Aristotle brought it up originally, it was Aquinas who removed the problem of time. Hume spent most of his time trying to disprove it by attacking causation itself. While he did not succeed in his goal, he certainly created more insight into the nature of causation vs. correlation. What he in turn did had more effect on science than it did religion. In any way it was brilliant. Hume did not refute the cosmological argument.
[EDIT:]
What Hume is stating is that the nature of causation as we understand it. In other words we imply causation where causation may not exist. And he is right. Observational causation is implied not certain. It’s correlation at best and again he is right.
He takes on existence in itself, where the material world cannot be determined fully to exist by the inherent flaws of perception, again he’s right.
What it does not deal with is metaphysical entities. Cosmology isn’t merely interested in physical existence. The argument can endure a claim that nothing physical actually exists. It deals with existence itself, in whatever form that takes, be it material or immaterial.
While one can make the argument that physical existence is not provable (and it’s not), there is nonetheless existence. And an existence cannot be a function of itself and is therefore dependent on something for it’s existence.[/quote]
The first cause itself is a fallacy if it argues that everything existing today or ever existed, has it’s existence wrapped up in an earlier contingent (things could have been a little different, different folks could have had children and you never were born). But when it comes to God, you just throw the rule out the door. If you look at it this way, it’s indeed a fallacy since you bring up the rule that everything must have come from some contingent. Hume points out that once you set up that rule you have to explain where God came from, as it’s built into the logic of the explanation.
[/quote]
That’s not really what the argument says. You’re counter claim may have validity if time were a factor, but contingency or dependence does not require an ‘earlier’ cause. It’s also not bound in anyway by perception. For instance, to say that matter depends on charged particles for it’s existence isn’t a statement of cause and effect in a temporal sense. It’s not ‘charged particles therefore matter’. It doesn’t even require that matter exist. However, by definition for matter to exist, it must have charged particles. So existence, dependency, contigency is based on truth by definition. If matter does exist, it must contain charged particles.
If you want to go metaphysical, the say a ‘law’ has components of it that make that law true. Without the components there is no law.
Hume’s observations on causation were very important in this regard. Because by observation we can never ‘prove’ a causal relationship. We can only observe correlation which may infer causal relationships, but does not prove them. This problem is, however solved by dependence. An observered causal relationship may or may not be true, but dependence is true by definition. Big difference.
I still cannot figure out why people hinge their hopes on a case where a defined logical fallacy may not be true at least in one case. An infinite regress is a fallacy because it begs the question, not because things are not infinite. Infinite regress requires that a ‘thing’ is a factor of itself. People who make this (very bad) counter claim always focus on the wrong thing. They focus on infinity. The problem isn’t infinity, it’s the regress. Infinity exists, infinite regresses do not. The authors poor example of using division completely misses what a regress is. A regress is not division, nor is it a matter of getting smaller. It’s removal. It’s subtraction, not division. When you are applying a regress to a event or a object of matter, you are not dividing it, you are removing properties to get to it’s core property. So this argument for the existence of infinite regress is patently false. Infinite regress is circular reasoning, that’s why it’s a fallacy. Eventually, something will have to be a factor of itself to be able to regress infinity.
That’s not how regression works. There is not an infinite amount of contingencies. It’s logically impossible to have infinite amount of contingency because it makes an entity contingent upon itself which is circular which is why it’s a fallacy. This whole line of reasoning does not work for that purpose it’s totally illogical. That’s why the infinite regress has long been dismissed as a counter argument to the cosmological argument. Infinite regress is circular reasoning, that makes it fallacious. You cannot counter argue or make any sort of argument with a built in logical fallacy as your basis and expect it to hold up. It doesn’t and it cannot. It violates the very rules of basic logic.
Aquinas’s argument does not have to change one iota. He would simply reject using a logical fallacy as a counter argument as he should.
The revelations in Physics only helps to strengthen not weaken the argument. If we are using ‘the Universe’ as the basis and core of existence, the universe as we know it, is finite, not infinite.
The other problem is the temporal reflections in your statements. There is no ‘before’ the big bang, or ‘before’ the universe. Time is a function of matter and it’s movement. Where matter and movement are absent, so is time. There is no ‘before God’ because it would be logically impossible for there to have been any such thing. By definition, being uncaused, or non-contingent, or non-dependent necessarily posits that there is no before.
When you are dealing with metaphysics, time is not a factor. All metaphysical existence is temporally eternal. So it really doesn’t matter what physical matter does. Physical matter is merely a slave, a result of metaphysics. Nothing physical can exist without it’s metaphysical counter part, however, the metaphysics work fine without the existence of physical matter.
Matter is not infinite, space is not infinite, and time can be theoretically infinite, but that depends on matter/ energy and movement or change.
Like I said, Aquinas wouldn’t have to change a thing, save maybe for his approach or more detailed explanations of what he means. In any event, the argument stands, and using a logical fallacy is not a refutation. It’s a fail right out of the gate.
The only hope of actually proving the argument wrong is to prove something can exist non-contingently and not be the Uncaused-cause. The only hope is to prove one of the premises incorrect. Sadly most people who have attempted to disprove the argument, haven’t taken the opportunity to learn it very well in any detail. Most counter arguments I have seen, counter argue things it does not even say, which is pretty terrible.
This is a good (and short) link talking about what the Cosmological Argument is not:
It covers most of the mistakes people make with it.
[/quote]
I thought I had you pegged on something else, the only real thing you are doing is putting God in the same metaphysical category as things like say, the color red, but what you are not remembering is that the actual metaphysical category of God should capture all Gods, just like the metaphysical category of red is a referent to all colors of red.
I don’t think this is necessarily a wrong place to argue from, but as it stands it doesn’t necessitate God in the way Christians view God, it’s just an open category. This isn’t to say that the Christian God doesn’t fit into your frame. The metaphysical realm is something I view as more a man made abstract that allows us to think outside the box.
To me, it seems more like this is one of the last rational places God can exist, but realize it isn’t an obviously strong place but it isn’t weak either, and not somewhere I envision Aquinas saying God would exist there.
Seems similar to Hinduism, equally mysterious to me… I don’t think it’s a silly place to argue from, just not expected and not a place I’d expect Aquinas to argue from.
[quote]kamui wrote:
Ok. I will try to answer in a way that you will hopefully be able to manage.
Note : The text in the “grey boxes” are quotes of things you said.
You yourself spoke about “a book written 2000 years ago”.
pat quoted that and answered it.
-i’m not a christian
-In a christian perspective, the New Testament is not a Bible, but a part of the Bible.
Pat isn’t a young earth creationist. You’re wasting your time here. And ours.
God is not meant to be “a way of explaining the observed events”.
Religion is not Science.
If you want to argue against something, try to understand it, without reducing it to what you think or want it to be.
Yep. This is why i’m still waiting to see all the “professional helpers” you keep speaking about.
You know, the ones who cure religion.
[quote]
There is no evidence of your god, anywhere, other than dumb people saying I believe.[/quote]
Ok. Now prove that evidence is the only criterium of truth. [/quote]
Religion is a symptom of mental illness. The mental illness can be treated.
Again, the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim, not the person who questions the claim.
Those who believe in idiotic sky fairies need to prove it exists.
As a rational person, if the evidence exists, I am willing to change my position. As a human, this is the only valid approach.[/quote]
Well, it just so happens that we are discuss ‘evidence’ right here. If you pay attention, you may see.
This video was really good. The ideas that truth is truth regardless of it’s source and there are not contradictory truths explains my views very well. If there are two contradictory truths as explanation of a single entity, one of them is wrong. Or our understanding is flawed. These are things I have been espousing for many years on these forums. Of course Aquinas’s work on contingencies are also something very near and dear to my heart.
That is why I said, you don’t need faith to know God exists. Logic tells us that He must. It takes faith to believe God is who he says he is in the scriptures and to trust him implicitly without the benefit of sensory interaction with Him.
You can believe in the Uncaused-cause as a stagnant lifeless being who started and left the creation to just follow the ‘rules’ put forth by creation, which is what the deists believe. Of course, that’s a partial denial of what the Uncaused-cause must be. For to be what it is, it must possess something like a will, and there is nothing to suggest will died off in the process of initial cause. That’s imposing a temporal limitation on something that by definition cannot be limited in such a way.
Aristotle brought it up originally, it was Aquinas who removed the problem of time. Hume spent most of his time trying to disprove it by attacking causation itself. While he did not succeed in his goal, he certainly created more insight into the nature of causation vs. correlation. What he in turn did had more effect on science than it did religion. In any way it was brilliant. Hume did not refute the cosmological argument.
[EDIT:]
What Hume is stating is that the nature of causation as we understand it. In other words we imply causation where causation may not exist. And he is right. Observational causation is implied not certain. It’s correlation at best and again he is right.
He takes on existence in itself, where the material world cannot be determined fully to exist by the inherent flaws of perception, again he’s right.
What it does not deal with is metaphysical entities. Cosmology isn’t merely interested in physical existence. The argument can endure a claim that nothing physical actually exists. It deals with existence itself, in whatever form that takes, be it material or immaterial.
While one can make the argument that physical existence is not provable (and it’s not), there is nonetheless existence. And an existence cannot be a function of itself and is therefore dependent on something for it’s existence.[/quote]
The first cause itself is a fallacy if it argues that everything existing today or ever existed, has it’s existence wrapped up in an earlier contingent (things could have been a little different, different folks could have had children and you never were born). But when it comes to God, you just throw the rule out the door. If you look at it this way, it’s indeed a fallacy since you bring up the rule that everything must have come from some contingent. Hume points out that once you set up that rule you have to explain where God came from, as it’s built into the logic of the explanation.
[/quote]
That’s not really what the argument says. You’re counter claim may have validity if time were a factor, but contingency or dependence does not require an ‘earlier’ cause. It’s also not bound in anyway by perception. For instance, to say that matter depends on charged particles for it’s existence isn’t a statement of cause and effect in a temporal sense. It’s not ‘charged particles therefore matter’. It doesn’t even require that matter exist. However, by definition for matter to exist, it must have charged particles. So existence, dependency, contigency is based on truth by definition. If matter does exist, it must contain charged particles.
If you want to go metaphysical, the say a ‘law’ has components of it that make that law true. Without the components there is no law.
Hume’s observations on causation were very important in this regard. Because by observation we can never ‘prove’ a causal relationship. We can only observe correlation which may infer causal relationships, but does not prove them. This problem is, however solved by dependence. An observered causal relationship may or may not be true, but dependence is true by definition. Big difference.
I still cannot figure out why people hinge their hopes on a case where a defined logical fallacy may not be true at least in one case. An infinite regress is a fallacy because it begs the question, not because things are not infinite. Infinite regress requires that a ‘thing’ is a factor of itself. People who make this (very bad) counter claim always focus on the wrong thing. They focus on infinity. The problem isn’t infinity, it’s the regress. Infinity exists, infinite regresses do not. The authors poor example of using division completely misses what a regress is. A regress is not division, nor is it a matter of getting smaller. It’s removal. It’s subtraction, not division. When you are applying a regress to a event or a object of matter, you are not dividing it, you are removing properties to get to it’s core property. So this argument for the existence of infinite regress is patently false. Infinite regress is circular reasoning, that’s why it’s a fallacy. Eventually, something will have to be a factor of itself to be able to regress infinity.
That’s not how regression works. There is not an infinite amount of contingencies. It’s logically impossible to have infinite amount of contingency because it makes an entity contingent upon itself which is circular which is why it’s a fallacy. This whole line of reasoning does not work for that purpose it’s totally illogical. That’s why the infinite regress has long been dismissed as a counter argument to the cosmological argument. Infinite regress is circular reasoning, that makes it fallacious. You cannot counter argue or make any sort of argument with a built in logical fallacy as your basis and expect it to hold up. It doesn’t and it cannot. It violates the very rules of basic logic.
Aquinas’s argument does not have to change one iota. He would simply reject using a logical fallacy as a counter argument as he should.
The revelations in Physics only helps to strengthen not weaken the argument. If we are using ‘the Universe’ as the basis and core of existence, the universe as we know it, is finite, not infinite.
The other problem is the temporal reflections in your statements. There is no ‘before’ the big bang, or ‘before’ the universe. Time is a function of matter and it’s movement. Where matter and movement are absent, so is time. There is no ‘before God’ because it would be logically impossible for there to have been any such thing. By definition, being uncaused, or non-contingent, or non-dependent necessarily posits that there is no before.
When you are dealing with metaphysics, time is not a factor. All metaphysical existence is temporally eternal. So it really doesn’t matter what physical matter does. Physical matter is merely a slave, a result of metaphysics. Nothing physical can exist without it’s metaphysical counter part, however, the metaphysics work fine without the existence of physical matter.
Matter is not infinite, space is not infinite, and time can be theoretically infinite, but that depends on matter/ energy and movement or change.
Like I said, Aquinas wouldn’t have to change a thing, save maybe for his approach or more detailed explanations of what he means. In any event, the argument stands, and using a logical fallacy is not a refutation. It’s a fail right out of the gate.
The only hope of actually proving the argument wrong is to prove something can exist non-contingently and not be the Uncaused-cause. The only hope is to prove one of the premises incorrect. Sadly most people who have attempted to disprove the argument, haven’t taken the opportunity to learn it very well in any detail. Most counter arguments I have seen, counter argue things it does not even say, which is pretty terrible.
This is a good (and short) link talking about what the Cosmological Argument is not:
It covers most of the mistakes people make with it.
[/quote]
I thought I had you pegged on something else, the only real thing you are doing is putting God in the same metaphysical category as things like say, the color red, but what you are not remembering is that the actual metaphysical category of God should capture all Gods, just like the metaphysical category of red is a referent to all colors of red.
[/quote]
I am not putting God in a metaphysical ‘category’. The argument is a metaphysical argument. Such is the nature of deductive arguments. The big difference is that deductive arguments, if true, are absolute. Inductive arguments, such as the stuff of science, which Hume eloquently points out, are not absolute, in fact it’s impossible for them to be absolute. If you want to get an absolute truth, you must put forth an deductive argument.
In fact, if you were able to conduct a scientific experiment that proved that God exists, it would be a less certain argument because it would be inductive. When your dealing with absolute truths that must be true beyond the shadow of any doubt, you must deal with deduction which deals with metaphysics.
Well, I keep have to clear this misconception up. There is no such thing as a ‘Christian God’. God is God, whether there are Christians who recognize that or not. And you are right in that this argument does not verify totally the nature of God as understood by Christians. Religion gives us more information about God than can be verified philosophically. But I am just dealing with existence. And the core essence of what Chrisitans call ‘God’, happens to be the same core essences of the ‘Uncaused-cause’, the ‘Necessary Being’. For instance, by the argument alone, we know several things about the conclusion. It could not be caused, by definition. It must be able to be causal and sit outside the causal chain. These are all concepts understood by Christians when talking about their Creator.
Aquinas’s big break through with regards to the cosmological argument was that he removed time from the equation of the causal chain. Rather than worry about cause and effect in the way it’s traditionally understood. He understood that the nature of things, depends on other things for their existence and that’s not a temporal condition. The pretty much kicked the doors down. You cannot have water with out hydrogen and oxygen. Sure putting 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom together will cause water. But water, by definition has hydrogen and oxygen. The first condition is temporal, the second is not.
Further these causal dependencies stretch into metaphysics as well. All metaphysical entities such as laws, math, concepts, ideas, are all contingent beings, but they are eternal in nature. They have no constraints put on them by matter, energy or movement. I don’t even think Aquinas knew how profound he was. Leibniz did, though. You want genius, that was it. Leibniz was the first to posit that there is no empty space, that every part of what we call ‘space’ is filled with something. A concept, that only now physicists are actually realizing is true.
That’s a genius right there.
So, other than the fact we can prove that the earth is ca. 4.5 billion years old, you still think that a book written around 2000 years ago is relevant?
[/quote]
It’s about 4000 years old, but who’s splitting hairs. It’s absolutely still relevant. You treating it like a science book is the silly part. You claiming that a book who changed the world and is still the most popular book in the world as irrelevant is flat laughable.
So when you have nothing quality to say, resort to insults and belittling. That surely helps your claim.
Pat was speaking about the book. Not the Earth.
But this is apparently well beyond your reading capacity. [/quote]
When the topic was the age of the earth, it makes little sense to make such claims. Secondly, The bible that you christians are talking about is the one that your fanciful nonsense is based - the new testament, was written after the alleged birth/disappearance/death of your fool martyr, around 2013 years ago.
Thirdly, even if your book is 4000 years ago, it does not really change the point. 4.5 billion years, and your imaginary friend only does something in the last 2/4000?
Laughably pathetic is the idea of the abrahamic god, just like all gods before. The god argument is a poor way of explaining the observed events, though it is quite informative of our species’ abject fear of the unknown, and the need we appear to have to explain things, no matter how poor the explanation.
[/quote]
Well Kamui already did it for me. You said the Bible was 2000 years old. I was correcting your misunderstanding. The ealiest writings of scripture started about 38 centuries ago. This has nothing to do with the age of the earth, universe or any other aspect of creation as we know it. Recent studies have pinned the age of the this universe down to 13.9 billion years ago, 100 million years earlier than previously thought.
Kamui is correct in that I am not a ‘young earther’. It’s difficult to have ‘On the first day’ prior to creation since a ‘day’ is measured by creation. However, the order of the events does square with what science understands about creation. If you look at what scientists would all ‘the singularity’, would contain all the stuff of the universe, the heavens and the earth, with in it. I could go on, but I fear you would not understand it.
If you want to counter argue that God does not exist, you better sharpen you tools, because you will need them all.
Your ‘lack of evidence’ is a factor of not looking, or willful ignorance. There are plenty of arguments for the existence of God and they are centuries old and unrefuted. It would be your own fault if you are not aware of them. We are actually talking about one of them now with Serviano.
Further, none of them require the bible. God doesn’t exist only in a book. That would be a tiny God if he were trapped there.
Religion is a symptom of mental illness. The mental illness can be treated.
[/quote]
Funny, never saw that in the DSM IV. And the idea that nothing can do something is perfectly sane?
You are making claims, prove them. Plenty of arguments for the existence of God. Pick one.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t believe anybody here believes in sky fairies, smart or idiotic ones. I don’t even really know what a sky fairy is. Unless you are like talking about a guy guy sky diving or something.
I don’t think you’ve proven you are rational at any level. Arrogant, condescending, insulting, emotive, yes. Rational, no. You have not made a single solitary rational claim.
This video was really good. The ideas that truth is truth regardless of it’s source and there are not contradictory truths explains my views very well. If there are two contradictory truths as explanation of a single entity, one of them is wrong. Or our understanding is flawed. These are things I have been espousing for many years on these forums. Of course Aquinas’s work on contingencies are also something very near and dear to my heart.
That is why I said, you don’t need faith to know God exists. Logic tells us that He must. It takes faith to believe God is who he says he is in the scriptures and to trust him implicitly without the benefit of sensory interaction with Him.
You can believe in the Uncaused-cause as a stagnant lifeless being who started and left the creation to just follow the ‘rules’ put forth by creation, which is what the deists believe. Of course, that’s a partial denial of what the Uncaused-cause must be. For to be what it is, it must possess something like a will, and there is nothing to suggest will died off in the process of initial cause. That’s imposing a temporal limitation on something that by definition cannot be limited in such a way.
Aristotle brought it up originally, it was Aquinas who removed the problem of time. Hume spent most of his time trying to disprove it by attacking causation itself. While he did not succeed in his goal, he certainly created more insight into the nature of causation vs. correlation. What he in turn did had more effect on science than it did religion. In any way it was brilliant. Hume did not refute the cosmological argument.
[EDIT:]
What Hume is stating is that the nature of causation as we understand it. In other words we imply causation where causation may not exist. And he is right. Observational causation is implied not certain. It’s correlation at best and again he is right.
He takes on existence in itself, where the material world cannot be determined fully to exist by the inherent flaws of perception, again he’s right.
What it does not deal with is metaphysical entities. Cosmology isn’t merely interested in physical existence. The argument can endure a claim that nothing physical actually exists. It deals with existence itself, in whatever form that takes, be it material or immaterial.
While one can make the argument that physical existence is not provable (and it’s not), there is nonetheless existence. And an existence cannot be a function of itself and is therefore dependent on something for it’s existence.[/quote]
The first cause itself is a fallacy if it argues that everything existing today or ever existed, has it’s existence wrapped up in an earlier contingent (things could have been a little different, different folks could have had children and you never were born). But when it comes to God, you just throw the rule out the door. If you look at it this way, it’s indeed a fallacy since you bring up the rule that everything must have come from some contingent. Hume points out that once you set up that rule you have to explain where God came from, as it’s built into the logic of the explanation.
[/quote]
That’s not really what the argument says. You’re counter claim may have validity if time were a factor, but contingency or dependence does not require an ‘earlier’ cause. It’s also not bound in anyway by perception. For instance, to say that matter depends on charged particles for it’s existence isn’t a statement of cause and effect in a temporal sense. It’s not ‘charged particles therefore matter’. It doesn’t even require that matter exist. However, by definition for matter to exist, it must have charged particles. So existence, dependency, contigency is based on truth by definition. If matter does exist, it must contain charged particles.
If you want to go metaphysical, the say a ‘law’ has components of it that make that law true. Without the components there is no law.
Hume’s observations on causation were very important in this regard. Because by observation we can never ‘prove’ a causal relationship. We can only observe correlation which may infer causal relationships, but does not prove them. This problem is, however solved by dependence. An observered causal relationship may or may not be true, but dependence is true by definition. Big difference.
I still cannot figure out why people hinge their hopes on a case where a defined logical fallacy may not be true at least in one case. An infinite regress is a fallacy because it begs the question, not because things are not infinite. Infinite regress requires that a ‘thing’ is a factor of itself. People who make this (very bad) counter claim always focus on the wrong thing. They focus on infinity. The problem isn’t infinity, it’s the regress. Infinity exists, infinite regresses do not. The authors poor example of using division completely misses what a regress is. A regress is not division, nor is it a matter of getting smaller. It’s removal. It’s subtraction, not division. When you are applying a regress to a event or a object of matter, you are not dividing it, you are removing properties to get to it’s core property. So this argument for the existence of infinite regress is patently false. Infinite regress is circular reasoning, that’s why it’s a fallacy. Eventually, something will have to be a factor of itself to be able to regress infinity.
That’s not how regression works. There is not an infinite amount of contingencies. It’s logically impossible to have infinite amount of contingency because it makes an entity contingent upon itself which is circular which is why it’s a fallacy. This whole line of reasoning does not work for that purpose it’s totally illogical. That’s why the infinite regress has long been dismissed as a counter argument to the cosmological argument. Infinite regress is circular reasoning, that makes it fallacious. You cannot counter argue or make any sort of argument with a built in logical fallacy as your basis and expect it to hold up. It doesn’t and it cannot. It violates the very rules of basic logic.
Aquinas’s argument does not have to change one iota. He would simply reject using a logical fallacy as a counter argument as he should.
The revelations in Physics only helps to strengthen not weaken the argument. If we are using ‘the Universe’ as the basis and core of existence, the universe as we know it, is finite, not infinite.
The other problem is the temporal reflections in your statements. There is no ‘before’ the big bang, or ‘before’ the universe. Time is a function of matter and it’s movement. Where matter and movement are absent, so is time. There is no ‘before God’ because it would be logically impossible for there to have been any such thing. By definition, being uncaused, or non-contingent, or non-dependent necessarily posits that there is no before.
When you are dealing with metaphysics, time is not a factor. All metaphysical existence is temporally eternal. So it really doesn’t matter what physical matter does. Physical matter is merely a slave, a result of metaphysics. Nothing physical can exist without it’s metaphysical counter part, however, the metaphysics work fine without the existence of physical matter.
Matter is not infinite, space is not infinite, and time can be theoretically infinite, but that depends on matter/ energy and movement or change.
Like I said, Aquinas wouldn’t have to change a thing, save maybe for his approach or more detailed explanations of what he means. In any event, the argument stands, and using a logical fallacy is not a refutation. It’s a fail right out of the gate.
The only hope of actually proving the argument wrong is to prove something can exist non-contingently and not be the Uncaused-cause. The only hope is to prove one of the premises incorrect. Sadly most people who have attempted to disprove the argument, haven’t taken the opportunity to learn it very well in any detail. Most counter arguments I have seen, counter argue things it does not even say, which is pretty terrible.
This is a good (and short) link talking about what the Cosmological Argument is not:
It covers most of the mistakes people make with it.
[/quote]
I thought I had you pegged on something else, the only real thing you are doing is putting God in the same metaphysical category as things like say, the color red, but what you are not remembering is that the actual metaphysical category of God should capture all Gods, just like the metaphysical category of red is a referent to all colors of red.
[/quote]
I am not putting God in a metaphysical ‘category’. The argument is a metaphysical argument. Such is the nature of deductive arguments. The big difference is that deductive arguments, if true, are absolute. Inductive arguments, such as the stuff of science, which Hume eloquently points out, are not absolute, in fact it’s impossible for them to be absolute. If you want to get an absolute truth, you must put forth an deductive argument.
In fact, if you were able to conduct a scientific experiment that proved that God exists, it would be a less certain argument because it would be inductive. When your dealing with absolute truths that must be true beyond the shadow of any doubt, you must deal with deduction which deals with metaphysics.
Well, I keep have to clear this misconception up. There is no such thing as a ‘Christian God’. God is God, whether there are Christians who recognize that or not. And you are right in that this argument does not verify totally the nature of God as understood by Christians. Religion gives us more information about God than can be verified philosophically. But I am just dealing with existence. And the core essence of what Chrisitans call ‘God’, happens to be the same core essences of the ‘Uncaused-cause’, the ‘Necessary Being’. For instance, by the argument alone, we know several things about the conclusion. It could not be caused, by definition. It must be able to be causal and sit outside the causal chain. These are all concepts understood by Christians when talking about their Creator.
Aquinas’s big break through with regards to the cosmological argument was that he removed time from the equation of the causal chain. Rather than worry about cause and effect in the way it’s traditionally understood. He understood that the nature of things, depends on other things for their existence and that’s not a temporal condition. The pretty much kicked the doors down. You cannot have water with out hydrogen and oxygen. Sure putting 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom together will cause water. But water, by definition has hydrogen and oxygen. The first condition is temporal, the second is not.
Further these causal dependencies stretch into metaphysics as well. All metaphysical entities such as laws, math, concepts, ideas, are all contingent beings, but they are eternal in nature. They have no constraints put on them by matter, energy or movement. I don’t even think Aquinas knew how profound he was. Leibniz did, though. You want genius, that was it. Leibniz was the first to posit that there is no empty space, that every part of what we call ‘space’ is filled with something. A concept, that only now physicists are actually realizing is true.
That’s a genius right there.[/quote]
Interesting point of view, I’m well aware of the difference between induction and deduction. I still don’t understand how you get around the fact that Aquinas’ arguments as stated were all deductive, so for me at least it’s a really big stretch to say that he was really arguing inductively and not about proving God’s existence since science doesn’t really seek to prove things deductively. If anything it’s more of a knock against Aquinas which I’m not really trying to do. In reality he may have, and was probably using language about Proof of God in a different way than folks who would argue laws of nature or universal laws, which are still a little mysterious when it comes to counterfactuals and explanations. The thing that many people forget is the nature of laws and proofs isn’t as clear cut as many assume. There is still a little mystery as laws we take for granted may hinge on accidental truths.
End of the day, I end up right back at square 1. And it isn’t my goal to give Aquinas a black eye by pointing out that science doesn’t seek to prove anything as it works with induction, observation, hypothesis testing etc (all inductive). Making deductive arguments about God’s existence a bit silly, like playing pin the tail on the dartboard.
But, I think it’s rather interesting to imagine God in the metaphysical realm. If he’s in charge of that realm, he’s in charge of everything when you really think about it. It works because it’s outside of time and is independent (though meaningless without man to interpret it) of man. It fits in a strange, but logical place in my mind.
[quote]pat wrote:<<< I don’t believe <> in sky fairies, >>>[/quote] NO SKY FAIRIES!?!?!?!?! And here we were gittin along so good for a minute there too. =[
[quote]pat wrote:<<< I don’t believe <> in sky fairies, >>>[/quote] NO SKY FAIRIES!?!?!?!?! And here we were gittin along so good for a minute there too. =[
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Interesting point of view, I’m well aware of the difference between induction and deduction. I still don’t understand how you get around the fact that Aquinas’ arguments as stated were all deductive, so for me at least it’s a really big stretch to say that he was really arguing inductively and not about proving God’s existence since science doesn’t really seek to prove things deductively. If anything it’s more of a knock against Aquinas which I’m not really trying to do. In reality he may have, and was probably using language about Proof of God in a different way than folks who would argue laws of nature or universal laws, which are still a little mysterious when it comes to counterfactuals and explanations. The thing that many people forget is the nature of laws and proofs isn’t as clear cut as many assume. There is still a little mystery as laws we take for granted may hinge on accidental truths.
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hmm, I think I misstated or you misunderstood what I was saying. The argument for God’s existence, all of them that are any good, are all deductive arguments. It simply not something you can argue inductively because when you boil it down, you are dealing with metaphysics. The reason this must be the case is that metaphysics is more real than what we would consider intuitively as physical reality. That’s because it deals in absolutes and does not rely on observation to be true.
The thing about cosmology, is that it’s more of a method than it is an argument. What I mean by that, is that by applying a regress, you can start from any point physical or non-physical and reach the same conclusion. If you take a pencil off your desk and strive to know everything about it that ever could have been known about it, you will end up with a cosmological argument. It’s inevitable, there is no option.
When it comes to the physical universe as we know it. We may or may not understand the laws that guide it, but the laws are still there. They exist whether or not we know about them or not. Further, nothing physical can exist without it’s metaphysical component.
Science is a wonderful tool for making sense of the physical world around us. But not everything is a nail and science cannot answer everything, it can give us clues, but we have to draw conclusions from them.
There is nothing arbitrary about the cosmological argument. It’s not random or hopeful in it’s premises or conclusions. The premise is existence and any form of it’s existence will ultimately rely on an Uncaused-cause for it’s existence. It’s the only conclusion that can be drawn. It’s impossible to draw another. The rules of logic dictate this necessity.
Correct. That’s how it works. Everything physical gets reduced to the metaphysical, and the metaphysical gets reduced to the Necessary Being. It’s elegent, it’s simple, and it explains a lot.
[quote]pat wrote:<<< I don’t believe <> in sky fairies, >>>[/quote] NO SKY FAIRIES!?!?!?!?! And here we were gittin along so good for a minute there too. =[
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[quote]pat wrote:<<< I don’t believe <> in sky fairies, >>>[/quote] NO SKY FAIRIES!?!?!?!?! And here we were gittin along so good for a minute there too. =[
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