Lol I thought you said something that exists cannot cause itself.
Based on unproven assumptions
What don’t you understand about something that exists, being made of other things that exist?
Explain how existence is an assumption?
Explain how something that exists, being made up of other things that exist is an assumption?
We were talking about causality and your premise that you cannot prove, therefore being an assumption. Then you said the universe has a cause because it exists. That is not proof that it was caused. I’m honestly not sure where you are going with this anymore.
@pat,
Stepping way from the proofs and arguments for a second…
If your entire “proof” is essentially that logical argument, what exactly does that do for you personally? Lets assume it is a logically sound argument with true premises that lead to a true conclusion, with that argument all you can say is that “God” is simply some thing that has only one quality we can be sure of (that it exists outside of creation and that it created the universe), right?
Is proving that God where all your passion comes from? Or do you take it any further and try to prove, or just believe in, any other qualities that it has (for an example, as a follower of any particular religion)?
If proving that God is what you are after I guess you can probably sleep easy at night with the cosmological argument. In my opinion It’s the smallest, infinitesimal step away from a God-of-the-gaps argument you can get in terms of expanding human knowledge, but I suppose if that is all you are after (proving that some entity/thing exists outside of creation) that argument will suffice.
I think it’s because you’re not wrapping your head around the concept. You’re still in ‘If you put fire to fuel, then it will burn’. That’s one kind which is temporally based. Another is contingency.
Things are made of other things, so if that thing lacks the properties that make it that thing, then it’s not that thing. If you take a motorcycle completely apart, you no longer have a motor cycle, you have a bunch of parts. But if you assemble those parts according to a design of a motorcycle, then you have a motorcycle. The motorcycle is the result of its concept, design and assembly of parts. This is also causation and time is not a factor in it. That’s is why it’s called ‘contingency’. That which exists is the sum of the properties that make it what it is.
Here’s more on causation. It’s a vast, deep well of knowledge, there are different kinds of causation, but they are mean basically the same thing. ‘Because A(and maybe C,Dand E), therefore B.’
well obviously if that is true then everything else is. That this person had a superhero son who walks on water, turns water into wine, and just straight brings himself back to life like Superman will in the new Justice League.
And he loves all his little children. Except those that don’t bow to him enough and those people will be tortured for eternity in a lake of fire. Not the priests banging little boys though because as long as you say you’re sorry it’s all good.
Thank you Lonnie for this post. The proof is a logical deductive argument. The deductive part is very important. It means essentially 2 things, your dealing in metaphysics, in as much as you would be dealing with them in mathematics. The second part, is that deductive arguments are either necessarily true or necessarily false. There is no in between. If you say 2+2=4 you are making a deductive argument and the result is necessarily true. In argument form, you would say.
There is a number 2
Further there is and additional 2
If 2 is added to the additional 2, therefore there are 4.
I left the numbers intentionally vague so that you understand numbers. Numbers are a concept. Sure you can have 2 apples, but the concept of mating them by their properties is a concept. Otherwise, you can have a single set of things that have apple properties and that would be 1 set. Or you can have one ‘Red Delicious’ and one ‘Granny Smith’.
We use numbers everyday and don’t even think about them as metaphysical constructs. If you were to ask the average person they probably would consider math a physical property, but they are not. Yet they exist. When you write a number, that’s not a number, it’s a symbol representing a number.
So in the same way that numbers can exist, not be physical, but be represented physically, we have other deductive arguments that prove that other things also exist and may in fact be able to be represented physically. Some old dead philosopher said it, I forgot which, but stated that the metaphysical is more real then the physical because we can prove them of falsify them absolutely. I tend to agree.
The reason I agree is the break down of matter itself. Once you get past ‘quarks’ and maybe ‘strings’ and energy, what do you have? Anything physical? Perhaps, but even once that’s discovered, it just kicks the can further down the road. Our physical existence is mostly empty space, no matter how you slice it, and yet we consider it real…Sorry I went of on a bit of a tangent.
I love philosophy, I love it a lot. I have a degree in that as well as psychology. But I like philosophy way more. It’s explanatory power is vastly greater and as a student, you forced to consider all the evidence on a topic. Most people don’t have that experience. My passion comes from the fact that most people haven’t considered everything.
As I got older, I realized that theism/ atheism/ agnosticism is more a psychological phenomenon than a matter of proof. Parents were strict, went to a church with a bunch of hypocrites, never ‘felt it’, religion is constricting, etc. However, people feel, feelings change. Emotions wane. If you do not have a solid plane on which to base that which you believe, you are lost. And it never happens in a good part of your life, it’s always something that jerks you out of your daily daze and makes you realize, you maybe missing something.
Examining all the evidence, at least gives you solid ground and most people haven’t. They may read a book like ‘The God Delusion’ and think, ‘well that’s good enough for me. All those gyrations religious people do always looked silly to me.’ Save for Dawkin’s is a biologist. He is as qualified to talk about religion and philosophy as your local mechanic. His arguments are laughably bad and that book is a best seller, while all these great books collect dust on the shelves and they examine both sides and explain, in almost painful detail, each side of the argument.
I am religious, but I don’t push it on anybody, that’s a different thing. That’s where you hedge your bets as a Theist. That this God thing actually cares you exist and will listen to you mostly whine. That’s where faith comes in. Not that there is not some strong theological backing, but it’s more murky.
Anthony Flew was the prominent atheist apologist of the 20th century and then he changed his mind. In his book ‘There is a God’, he explained that he could no longer explain away the arguments and he followed the evidence to where it led him. Keep in mind he never became religious, but he changed his mind on the basis of the evidence that God, or something like a God we like to call God, does, in fact must exist.
Guess what, he lost all his friends, all his colleagues turned on him, all the people who liked him before now loathed him. It’s a dangerous thing to change your mind. It could cost you everything. If you ever wonder why it’s so hard to change someone’s mind, in the face of overwhelming evidence, it’s often they cannot bare the cost. However, people do change.
Christopher Hitchers has a brother, Peter. They look the same and sound the same. If one were to go on stage for the other, few would be the wiser. Both were atheists. Peter, after considering the evidence for a very long time, changed his mind. He is now both theist and religious. He writes books too, mostly to debunk his brother’s work. He said, it too, cost him everything, including his brother’s affection. In the end they had some relationship, but it wasn’t strong.
The cosmological argument is more a form of argument then an argument itself. There are many kinds and they deal with things like ‘god of gaps’ issues. Like any good argument it’s been honed and perfected over time as our knowledge increased. The Argument from Contingency is the strongest, though even weaker ones like the Kalam have not actually been disproven.
The reason the conclusion is, what it is, an Uncaused-cause, Unmoved-mover, Necessary Being is because there is no other way to resolve the argument without invoking horrendous fallacy. No other conclusion can be drawn. Things can’t just be, that’s circular. You cannot have more than one ‘Uncaused-cause’ because it violates the law of non-contradiction, etc. There is no other answer. And you cannot then ask ‘What caused the Uncaused-cause?’ If something was not caused, then it has no cause. There is no answer for something that exists and was not brought into existence. That does not explain why ‘God’ or this Uncaused-cause is there. There is no why, and its not ‘just there’. There is no origin. We can determine that much, but it doesn’t necessarily satisfy our curiosity. Honestly, even after 2000 years, we haven’t delved philosophically into the nature of God that much. We know it cannot have been caused, there is no how or why it exists, and it doesn’t just exist. It’s a paradox, but paradox’s exist.
According to Xeno, we should be able to move, but move we do. And no, division by time does not solve that issue. It only tells you where your at, it doesn’t tell you how you got there.
I don’t recall anybody talking about the Bible. You’re just throwing shit to see if it sticks.
Lol that’s gotta be it.
Where did you get this concept? I can’t find that sort of definition for contingency anywhere.
But what are we talking about again? Causation! that’s right.
What?? Again, where are you going with this.
Another great wall of words. Thank you.
We are getting WAY far away from what I mentioned, which is that you are assuming the universe is caused. This is but one simple objection to one of the assumptions you have made. You cannot prove that it was, therefore, you are assuming your premise is correct. The assumption allows you to come to your conclusion, but because the premises are not proven, your conclusion is not proven.
This was SMH’s original objection that you spend hundreds of posts dodging, deflecting, and rearranging your argument. I see you are doing the same tactics again, and I’m understanding why @H_factor bowed out, there really is no point running around in circles with this nonsense. Keep believing you have proof, everybody else knows it is only an argument that has premises that cannot be proven.
Yeah and Pat will keep bumping threads for some god awful reason that haven’t had a reply in days simply to copy and paste from some other link. SMH thread all over again
I am not assuming the universe is caused, it is caused. All the things that make the universe what it is, is what the universe is contingent upon to exist. That without the properties that make the universe what it is, would not then exist.
Can you provide an explanation how a universe can exist without that which makes it what it is.
Try the encyclopedia of philosophy if you are not able to find information on contingent causation.
The wall of words is important.
Do you trust science?
I looked it up, and it didn’t match what you were saying… that’s the point.
You keep going here. I never said that the universe isn’t what it is or whatever strawman you’re taking down here.
Prove it. Validate this premise.
To do so, you will have to know about the beginning of the universe. Considering I don’t think you have those cards or are even remotely close to the person who would discover such a thing, I won’t wait.
What is this in reference to? I assume the condescending remark has a point, hop to it.
Ya I think at this point I’m just being trolled and need to let the nonsense die in silence.
So you are saying you hold certain beliefs because your friends wouldn’t be your friends if you didn’t, or because other people have come to the same conclusion after years of being an atheist? Or perhaps more broadly, you aren’t willing to deal with the consequences of not believing those thing? Doesn’t sound like someone who just loves philosophy and truth to me.
You dont find issue with your conclusions being tied to the issues, and that perhaps that desire clouds your judgement about what the truth value of your premises and arguments are?
If you are willing to make the leap of faith that the thing that created the universe has properties X,Y,Z, why not just make the leap of faith that the universe can be that thing and we just havent figured out how yet? They both have equal amounts of evidence, except we actually know something about the universe.
With all due respect please re read my post. You asked and I answered. It’s the opposite of how I feel. It was a statement about why people are stubborn to change their minds. I gave the counter arguments a chance and they did not hold up to scrutiny. They rather end up in fallacy. I care for the truth. Not personal victory.
But are happy to hold religious beliefs that are beyond any evidence?
“Believes in the truth.”
Presenting same flawed arguments that were pointed out as flawed years ago. Repeating something consistently won’t ever make it any more correct. Like Drew said it is reliant on a premise that Pat can’t prove. Which renders the whole thing moot at least from a sense of it being something that can be proven. I’m sure another copy and paste to try to deflect from the inability to prove that is coming.
Horseshit. You may not understand it, but I put it as simply as I could. I cannot help you beyond that.
[quote]
I am not saying the universe is what is it is. The universe is because or what makes it up, that is a different statement all together.
Asked and answered several times. Re-read, not retyping what I already wrote.
This is not a condescending remark. It was a legit question, because all of science is based on causation. If you believe causation to be some sort of myth, or lie, so is science. So you must believe causation to be true if you believe science. That was the point of asking that. See Hume for more detail.