I’m curious what probability has to do with anything when the Universe (and when I say Universe, I mean all visible, non-visible, future and past) is most likely infinite.
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
I actually don’t know. There might be good and evil.
[/quote]
I can respect that, actually. Have a good night.
[/quote]
If there is a god, he didn’t want us to follow a rule book. He wanted us to grapple with it ourselves. What’s the point to life if you have a rulebook?[/quote]
uh, what? What ‘rule book’. How would you know, that if there’s a God he would want to fend for ourselves?
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
The multiverse doesn’t solve the problem. It just kicks the can further down the metaphysical road. Why is there a multiverse, instead of nothing? [/quote]
Why is there a god, instead of nothing?[/quote]
By definition, the question is logically absurd. The definition of Uncaused-cause, Necessary Being, etc. eliminates the applicability of the question ‘why’.
That delves into the question ‘What must the Uncaused-cause be, to exist and be what it is?’ Since the question ‘why’ implicates a cause, and by definition the entity in question has no cause, then ‘why’ cannot be asked.
Now you can make this claim of other things, but you would have to demonstrate how, by definition, the other thing(s) are without cause and therefore could not have ‘why’ asked of them. If you can ask ‘why’ about something, then it is not the end of the causal chain, it’s part of it and therefore not the conclusion of the cosmological arguments.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
It doesn’t deal with causal theories or anything like that. That is the realm of Cosmology, not Intelligent Design.
[/quote]
They are related in a way that I am sure I will address once I see the material in question.[/quote]
They are related in the way, in terms of the origin of the initial conditions. But once you get into that, you are no longer dealing with intelligent design.
[quote]pat wrote:
Now you can make this claim of other things, but you would have to demonstrate how, by definition, the other thing(s) are without cause and therefore could not have ‘why’ asked of them. [/quote]
And it can be done the same way that you do with god–by definitional assertion. There is no valid argument for god’s uncausedness that cannot logically be transferred to the universe itself. Notice that I said “logically.” This is not to make a judgement on metaphysical possibility. It may be so that the universe cannot have been uncaused, but this is assumptive and therefore unproved, as was the plain conclusion of the Proof of God Thread.
As an aside, the “can you as ‘why’” point is incoherent, and it can only be furthered by assertion. You haven’t proved that god exists, so you certainly haven’t proved that one can’t ask why he exists.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
It doesn’t deal with causal theories or anything like that. That is the realm of Cosmology, not Intelligent Design.
[/quote]
They are related in a way that I am sure I will address once I see the material in question.[/quote]
They are related in the way, in terms of the origin of the initial conditions. But once you get into that, you are no longer dealing with intelligent design.[/quote]
Causality and probability are inextricably linked. Like I said, once there is actual material for me to criticize, I will make the link clear.
Hang on, I can’t get sucked back into this.
We went over this in great, great detail very recently. The conclusion of that thread was that you were unable to prove without fallacy or assumption that the universe must logically have a cause, or, if I am permitted redundancy, that it is logically impossible for the universe to be uncaused. The argument that you put forth was shown beyond the possibility of doubt to be invalid. So there is really no desire on my part to retread that old ground.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
It doesn’t deal with causal theories or anything like that. That is the realm of Cosmology, not Intelligent Design.
[/quote]
They are related in a way that I am sure I will address once I see the material in question.[/quote]
I found some material on it, which is actually more correctly called Fine Tuning theories. So peruse away at your leisure:
http://biologos.org/questions/fine-tuning
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/life-universe-and-everything/
And what Christopher Hitchens says about it:
God of the gaps argument.
Cheers
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Hang on, I can’t get sucked back into this.
We went over this in great, great detail very recently. The conclusion of that thread was that you were unable to prove without fallacy or assumption that the universe must logically have a cause, or, if I am permitted redundancy, that it is logically impossible for the universe to be uncaused. The argument that you put forth was shown beyond the possibility of doubt to be invalid. So there is really no desire on my part to retread that old ground.[/quote]
Was that pat or Sloth you had the philosophy row with? I can’t remember. I thought it was Sloth making the proof claim
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Because the universe comprises matter/energy that must’ve be set in motion - i.e. the Big Bang. The singularity, or whatever came first must have been created by something/someone immune from infinite regress. The matter/energy cannot be immune from infinite regress due to the first law of thermodynamics: matter/energy cannot be lost or created in a closed system.[/quote]
None of these arguments can be made without assumption, and few of them can be made without special pleading, which is why you will not find credible theist philosophers (Platinga, Craig, etc.) referring to their conclusions as proved, but rather “argued” or “strongly argued,” or “it is reasonable to believe X” and the like.
It is even possible that God exists and yet He exists beyond the reach of human reason and cannot be logically “proved” without assumption.[/quote]
Craig? Credible? LOL
[/quote]
Perhaps my assumption is wrong, but your posts give the strong impression that you do not see ANY theist as credible (I am not speaking of the CvE debate, this is philosophy), so singling out Craig is rather silly and you should just come out and say “all theists” like you said “all abrahamic religions” in another thread. Not thzt there’s anything wrong with that…but it does mean you can’t single one guy out.
[/quote]
Craig is a documented liar. If you watched the videos I posted you’ll see that. I can’t speak to all theists.
I do hate all Abrahamic religions. They’re death cults. And they all condone genital mutilation.
[/quote]
Not exactly what I said. I’m not a great fan of Craig but that’s not what I was getting at. Your posts imply you believe that there are NO credible theists at all, and thus it is wrong to single one out if you believe there are none credible.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Now you can make this claim of other things, but you would have to demonstrate how, by definition, the other thing(s) are without cause and therefore could not have ‘why’ asked of them. [/quote]
And it can be done the same way that you do with god–by definitional assertion. There is no valid argument for god’s uncausedness that cannot logically be transferred to the universe itself. Notice that I said “logically.” This is not to make a judgement on metaphysical possibility. It may be so that the universe cannot have been uncaused, but this is assumptive and therefore unproved, as was the plain conclusion of the Proof of God Thread.
[/quote]
No you cannot simply transfer this claim to the universe or anything else for that matter. It’s not that simple, because you cannot explicitly derived the uncausedness of something. You couldn’t even do it with God. You could not explicitly derive that God is uncaused, there is no logical method in which to do so.
Of course, now we are back to the cosmological forms and the arguments there of. The arguments do not set out to prove God is uncaused. The arguments purpose is to solve the causal chain. It just happens to solve the problem of causal regress with an uncaused, transcendent Causer. It just so happened that that was the only solution to the problem. Aristotle, initially didn’t necessarily believe in God nor sought to prove the existence of God, he was trying to solve the problem of an infinite causal regress.
Hell, to him the conclusion wasn’t all that big a deal for all we know. It was just another line of logic he put forth, likely, little knowing the implications it would have over the centuries.
This conclusion is not simply transferable. One cannot just say ‘Well it’s as likely the Universe as God or anything else.’ That is not a correct assumption and there are many problems with it.
First, we cannot deductively prove the universe exists. The universe is an a posteriori derivation. It’s existence is established by senses, by observation. One cannot deduce deductively it exists. Though it’s existence is highly probable, the epidemiological limitation on it, is that it cannot be proven not to be a figment of my imagination, that and everything in it cannot be proven not to be a grand hallucination. I am not saying it’s any of that, I am saying it’s not a deductive, logical assertion. The information about it is received through our senses and our senses are fallible and limited. We firm up these conclusions by consensus, that many others agree to observe and sense the same things we do. This makes the universe highly probable and while it may get ever closer to the line of certainty, it can never hit it absolutely.
That makes a huge problem when trying to apply the conclusion of a deductive argument to an object of induction. You simply cannot make that shift.
Second, the universe is a contingent entity. Assuming what we know about the universe to be true, the universe is one of the most contingent, caused things in existence. It’s contingent upon the things that make it up, matter, energy, information. Without matter, energy and information you have no universe. It’s also contingent upon natural law. The ‘rules’ that this matter, energy and information are contingent upon, cause the universe to exist, to be what it is.
So it’s impossible that the universe is an uncaused-cause. It’s existence is established inductively, not deductively. You cannot conclude a deductive argument with an inductive entity or maxim. And the universe, assuming it exists, is a contingent entity there for it cannot be a non-contingent entity. It cannot be caused and then be an uncaused-cause.
Whether or not it’s understandable is not an issue. We don’t have to understand it conceptually for it to be true. That’s the conclusion of the various cosmological arguments, the premises for those arguments are sound and the conclusion is the only possible solution to the given premises.
Again, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been objections, but the objections have not unseated, debunked, or disproven the arguments. They raise important questions, but they don’t disprove them.
I cannot make you believe or disbelieve the arguments, but they stand soundly on their own. Belief or disbelief is not required.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Hang on, I can’t get sucked back into this.
We went over this in great, great detail very recently. The conclusion of that thread was that you were unable to prove without fallacy or assumption that the universe must logically have a cause, or, if I am permitted redundancy, that it is logically impossible for the universe to be uncaused. The argument that you put forth was shown beyond the possibility of doubt to be invalid. So there is really no desire on my part to retread that old ground.[/quote]
We were discussing an argument I made, for pages and pages. We were stuck on the one thing, we never really got into the rest of it. Although I do have a revised version which I think may actually work, without the problems of the previous argument. 
But I wouldn’t be so hardheaded about it this time should we revisit it.
But we really didn’t discuss this other stuff in any great detail.
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
Craig is a documented liar. If you watched the videos I posted you’ll see that. I can’t speak to all theists.
[/quote]
Pure bullshit. Documented liar? A double doctorate, a scholar with well over 30 published works? lol, that’s desperate.
Well that just proves you don’t know shit about Abrahamic religions, at all. That’s a completely ignorant statement.
[I’m combining the two points from the two posts here, to save time, which I presently have little of.]
[quote]pat wrote:
Second, the universe is a contingent entity. Assuming what we know about the universe to be true, the universe is one of the most contingent, caused things in existence. It’s contingent upon the things that make it up, matter, energy, information. Without matter, energy and information you have no universe.[/quote]
This is a fundamentally flawed view of the universe. The universe is defined as “the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated.” It is matter, energy, information, planets, stars, galaxies, black holes–everything. It is precisely those things, and nothing more. Thus, if it is contingent on those things–those things being it itself–then it is contingent on itself, and is, by your own definition, God.
[quote]pat wrote:
We were discussing an argument I made[/quote]
Yes, we were discussing an argument you made, but it didn’t fail because of some defect in your ability to formulate logical arguments–it failed because these arguments will invariably reduce to assumption or fallacy or circularity or an amalgam of the three. The reason that thread was so frustrating for you was that you were fighting a battle from a position of nearly unthinkable disadvantage, and I was fighting a battle that I really couldn’t lose if I were the least competent thinker hereabouts. All it takes is the challenge–prove this premise, prove that premise, prove yon premise–to show that these are, as the best theist philosophers readily admit, strong arguments and not settled proofs.
As for the strength of the arguments, I agree with you. It is this very topic that makes me an agnostic (who leans, ever so slightly, toward theism) and not an atheist. But I cannot say, and no one has ever in good faith and in objectively demonstrable verity been able to say, that “God is true and it can be proved without assumption, beyond the possibility of doubt.”
As for your reformulated argument, I would love to get into it, though I may be slow to respond in the coming weeks.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
^If that’s how you feel than that’s how you feel. [/quote]
It’s a feeling backed up by experience and knowledge of how the world really works. People get deluded. People hallucinate. Even today there are miracle stories that YOU don’t take seriously. Why should we take miracle stories that take place 2000 years ago any more seriously than you take many today?[/quote]
It’s your life, do what you want. Experience and knowledge only explain a tiny fraction of how the “world really works.”
How do you know I don’t take them serious. A lot of people do. Either way there is a distinct difference, The Son of God is not reported completing the miracle, which is what we have been talking about. [/quote]
If you don’t believe a miracle today, why would you believe one from 2000 years ago, just because someone said the Son of God did it.
Them: I saw a miracle.
You: I don’t believe you.
Them: The Son of God did it.
You: Now I believe you.
Does moving their testimony back to when people were much more superstitious due to greater ignorance about the world make that back and forth interaction more or less rational?
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
The multiverse doesn’t solve the problem. It just kicks the can further down the metaphysical road. Why is there a multiverse, instead of nothing? [/quote]
Why is there a god, instead of nothing?[/quote]
By definition, the question is logically absurd. The definition of Uncaused-cause, Necessary Being, etc. eliminates the applicability of the question ‘why’.
That delves into the question ‘What must the Uncaused-cause be, to exist and be what it is?’ Since the question ‘why’ implicates a cause, and by definition the entity in question has no cause, then ‘why’ cannot be asked.
Now you can make this claim of other things, but you would have to demonstrate how, by definition, the other thing(s) are without cause and therefore could not have ‘why’ asked of them. If you can ask ‘why’ about something, then it is not the end of the causal chain, it’s part of it and therefore not the conclusion of the cosmological arguments. [/quote]
You just come up with uncaused being. It’s a fabricated idea the possibily of which we are utterly incapable of ascertaining. How do you know there can be an uncaused being? How do you know there can be an uncaused being but not an uncaused multi-verse? You don’t. You just claim one is possible and the other not without any knowledge. There is no philosophical argument for why there can be one kind of uncaused thing (a being you call god) and not another uncaused thing (a thing called the cosmos).
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
I actually don’t know. There might be good and evil.
[/quote]
I can respect that, actually. Have a good night.
[/quote]
If there is a god, he didn’t want us to follow a rule book. He wanted us to grapple with it ourselves. What’s the point to life if you have a rulebook?[/quote]
uh, what? What ‘rule book’. How would you know, that if there’s a God he would want to fend for ourselves?[/quote]
Yes, he would want us to fend for ourselves. What’s the point of life if you have all the answers?
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]darsemnos wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
BTW - Dawkins criticises cosmological arguments by saying they rely on infinite regress(turtles all the way down) from which G-d is unjustifiably immune. However the quote above from Maimonides addresses that.[/quote]
It’s a copout. If god can always exist why can’t the universe(or multi-verse)?
Carl Sagan puts it rather diplomatically here:
The multiverse doesn’t solve the problem. It just kicks the can further down the metaphysical road. Why is there a multiverse, instead of nothing? Leibniz beat everybody to the punch with all these counter claims.
Eternal universe does not matter, infinite multiverse does not matter, it doesn’t solve the problem, it introduces fallacies.
If eternal universe is assumed as brute fact, you have a circular argument. The universe is, because it is.
If you introduce an infinite multiverse you can either introduce a circular argument, the multiverse is, because it is. Or you have an infinite regress which is also circular, but also nothing can be created because it never finishes.
The other problem with the multiverse, especially for science is there is not a single shred of evidence for it. There is nothing observable, there is nothing that can be measured, it’s at best a mathematical possibility, but has no basis in fact or reason. It actually has no scientific basis, it only has a mathematical basis.
I don’t have a problem with the postulation of a multiverse, but it’s technically not science since there is nothing to observe or measure. Without testability it’s only equations.[/quote]
God is because god is. That doesn’t solve anything any more.
Actually, as I understand it, we were driven to the multiverse hypothesis by math, not the desire to bury god. So it’s scientific in the sense that it’s supported by the language of science, mathematics, but we just lack the means to verify it, for now. But the same was once true of black holes. Now we know they exist. There may be a time in the future when we figure out how to prove there are other universes even though we can’t see them directly. We can’t see black holes directly either, but we know they are there. \
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
BTW - Dawkins criticises cosmological arguments by saying they rely on infinite regress(turtles all the way down) from which G-d is unjustifiably immune. However the quote above from Maimonides addresses that.[/quote]
What Dawkins argues are strawmen. He starts with some form of cosmological argument, makes it worse and then attacks the creation he fabricated. What Dawkins has going for him is he is a good writer, he is a terrible philosopher. Laughably bad. He takes claims nobody makes, says that theists actually argue the garbage he put forth.
I don’t know what kind of biologist he is, but he is a lousy philosopher. He really shouldn’t publish about topics he knows nothing about.[/quote]
Nope. There is no out for god. You don’t just get to say he’s an uncaused cause. How do you know that he is? Because you define him that way? I could define the multiverse that way. If time was started at the big bang, what sense does cause make in a timeless multi-verse. These questions are beyond easy answers, and you want easy answers.
Can you identify one strawman Dawkins has used?