This is long, but I thought you would like it since we discussed these people before, specifically Quentin Smith and William Lane Craig.
I am watching it now. I will comment when I finish.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Pat–happy Friday to you. I will respond later in the day, or over the weekend. I hope you’re not done with logic, because logic absolutely does begin and end this discussion. Before I respond, I’d like to bring up something that went unanswered before: You keep using the term, “be a factor of.” As best I can tell, this is a phraseology that is yours alone, albeit one whose meaning I think I can divine. Does this mean “cause”?
If X is a factor of Y, has X caused Y?[/quote]
Yes, the way I am using the term it is causal. Interchangeably would also be dependent, as a result, reason, because of, etc. These are all terminology of causation.
But with regards to “If X is a factor of Y, has X caused Y?”, no. X being a factor of ‘Y’ isn’t that ‘X’ is soley responsible for ‘Y’. ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘X’ may be factors of ‘Y’, but with regards to discussion we are only discussing ‘X’.
So to say that something is a factor of something else, isn’t to say it’s the only factor. For instance, saying the universe is a factor of dark energy, isn’t saying that dark energy is the only factor, but it is important definitionally to the universe. Am I making any sense?
And no, I am not done with logic… [/quote]
So if X is a factor of Y, X did cause Y, but not necessarily on its own. As in, “my father’s anger was caused by my having dented his car, and by my mother having come home smelling like men’s cologne.”
If that’s a fair characterization of what you’re saying, I’ll get down to a response. Hopefully today, definitely by tomorrow.[/quote]
Well, not exactly. Why it may be true that both factors contributed to your fathers anger, they don’t define it. Indeed it’s possible that your father is angry for many reasons, or for no reason at all. He could just be an angry person.
A heightened emotional state and aggressive mental state are factors of anger. They would define what anger is. That what stimulates this doesn’t define anger, they may cause one to be angry, but it isn’t ‘anger’ in itself.
So external factors may indeed make ‘your father’ angry, but they don’t define his anger. Anger is something else. For indeed, he may not care about his car and he may hate his wife and not care what happened to them. He has the option to not be angry.
So ‘factors’ as we are discussing them here are that which are definitionally necessary for something to be true.
Now even supposing you statement is true, it doesn’t definitionally define anger. It doesn’t make anger what it is. It may be the reason for the anger, but it isn’t the definitional basis of anger.[/quote]
Right, I chose a bad analogy because psychology is much more complicated. I meant only to confirm that if X is a factor of Y as you’re using the term, X is a cause of Y, if not the only cause. Is this correct? Will respond in earnest once this is confirmed, and will watch the video. I actually like Craig a lot–he demolished Harris in a debate which I think was sponsored by Notre Dame (There is another installment of the same series in which Hitchens demolishes D’Souza, making the count, from the ones I’ve seen, 1-1).
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Pat–happy Friday to you. I will respond later in the day, or over the weekend. I hope you’re not done with logic, because logic absolutely does begin and end this discussion. Before I respond, I’d like to bring up something that went unanswered before: You keep using the term, “be a factor of.” As best I can tell, this is a phraseology that is yours alone, albeit one whose meaning I think I can divine. Does this mean “cause”?
If X is a factor of Y, has X caused Y?[/quote]
Yes, the way I am using the term it is causal. Interchangeably would also be dependent, as a result, reason, because of, etc. These are all terminology of causation.
But with regards to “If X is a factor of Y, has X caused Y?”, no. X being a factor of ‘Y’ isn’t that ‘X’ is soley responsible for ‘Y’. ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘X’ may be factors of ‘Y’, but with regards to discussion we are only discussing ‘X’.
So to say that something is a factor of something else, isn’t to say it’s the only factor. For instance, saying the universe is a factor of dark energy, isn’t saying that dark energy is the only factor, but it is important definitionally to the universe. Am I making any sense?
And no, I am not done with logic… [/quote]
So if X is a factor of Y, X did cause Y, but not necessarily on its own. As in, “my father’s anger was caused by my having dented his car, and by my mother having come home smelling like men’s cologne.”
If that’s a fair characterization of what you’re saying, I’ll get down to a response. Hopefully today, definitely by tomorrow.[/quote]
Well, not exactly. Why it may be true that both factors contributed to your fathers anger, they don’t define it. Indeed it’s possible that your father is angry for many reasons, or for no reason at all. He could just be an angry person.
A heightened emotional state and aggressive mental state are factors of anger. They would define what anger is. That what stimulates this doesn’t define anger, they may cause one to be angry, but it isn’t ‘anger’ in itself.
So external factors may indeed make ‘your father’ angry, but they don’t define his anger. Anger is something else. For indeed, he may not care about his car and he may hate his wife and not care what happened to them. He has the option to not be angry.
So ‘factors’ as we are discussing them here are that which are definitionally necessary for something to be true.
Now even supposing you statement is true, it doesn’t definitionally define anger. It doesn’t make anger what it is. It may be the reason for the anger, but it isn’t the definitional basis of anger.[/quote]
Right, I chose a bad analogy because psychology is much more complicated. I meant only to confirm that if X is a factor of Y as you’re using the term, X is a cause of Y, if not the only cause. Is this correct? Will respond in earnest once this is confirmed, and will watch the video. I actually like Craig a lot–he demolished Harris in a debate which I think was sponsored by Notre Dame (There is another installment of the same series in which Hitchens demolishes D’Souza, making the count, from the ones I’ve seen, 1-1). [/quote]
The more I have seen of Craig, the more I am impressed with him as a heavy hitting intellectual. I viewed a debate between him and Hitchens, and destroys him. It was to the point where Hitchens forfeits his final rebuttal. I can post the debate if you want to see it. I don’t initially because they are long; it’s an hour.
Then him and Dawkins which after viewing, I can say I cannot take Dawkins seriously in any detail anymore. It’s not that Dawkins could not answer to the logic presented, he certainly did not. He consistently fell back to rhetoric rather than reason. It’s because he sounds like an angry child. “Why?” he says “is a silly question” without qualification. No, he just doesn’t like it. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t have an answer. It’s because he knows rightly, that it’s the undoing of the basis of his arguments.
The things I don’t like about Craig is his lack of commitment to certainty. If the premises are true and logic sound and the conclusions follow from the premises, there is no need to the lack of certainty. It’s simply being polite where there is no need for it, for the facts speak for themselves. I also personally don’t like defending the Kalam argument, which he does. Where space-time breaks down, so does the Kalam argument because it’s dependent on it.
To answer your question, ‘X’ is a causal factor of ‘Y’ that without ‘X’, there could be no ‘Y’.
I appreciate this debate smh, and I hope to continue it. These are important questions far too many people ignore. Don’t let the nature of debate deter you. These discussions are necessarily tense at times. It’s at those moments questions get answered. It’s at those moments when you see ego stubborn attempt to trump the logic which is visible in the viewed debates. It’s at those moments we learn.
Craig is not a philosopher he just uses philosophic language. He is a rhetorician who only wants to sell books. If there were actual proof God or gods existed this thread would not even exist. All of these so-called debates and arguments about the existence of God end up the same: “well, you can’t prove God doesn’t exist so I win.” If you have faith then you have faith, don’t try and use logic and reason and philosophy to prove that something cannot be disproved. There really is no point. Someone should believe in God because he can’t prove there is no God? There is no faith in that.
[Note: I’m writing this note after having finished with this post. This thing is complex. I have used a little logical notation, only because I do not have the time to keep rewriting the same premises. We may need to clarify some aspects of what I’ve written here, which I do want to do, because I to have been fully clear before you respond to me.]
Alright. I have identified what I think is the fundamental argument.
The universe must have a cause.
This will be referred to as P.
P is implicit in the argument you offered earlier, and, indeed, in every cosmological argument. Now, over the course of this debate, you attacked this premise’s denial, which I will refer to as ~P. But in doing so, you took the following premise (or a variation thereof):
The universe cannot have caused itself, and it cannot have been caused by nothing.
I will focus on the latter of those two statements. You argued that [nothing] could not have caused the universe because [nothing] has no properties and cannot “do,” etc. But this was fallacious in that it did not respond to ~P. Allow me to explain: The contention of ~P is not that [nothing], an actor, caused the universe. The contention is that the universe was not caused.
So, that [nothing] has no properties and therefore no causal power has no bearing on ~P, which, again, claims not that something without properties caused the universe, but that the universe was not caused.
Now, you want to disprove this. So you argue P–the universe must have a cause. But why?
Well, let me try.
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Everything that exists must have a cause.
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The universe exists.
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Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
But now I find myself obliged to prove premise 1: Everything that exists must have a cause.. The theist’s manner of doing this is to formulate an argument which takes as its most essential premise:
That which exists, cannot come from that which does not.
You will find this premise in or implied in every cosmological proof of God ever offered. But, at this point, the argument has circled around. Here is why: [That which exists, cannot come from that which does not] really means [That which exists, cannot [be caused by] that which does not], which presupposes that that which exists must have been caused.
What all this means is that a denial of ~P–which is an affirmation of P, your premise–cannot rely on any variation of the maxim that that which exists cannot have been caused by nothing, because this presupposes that a cause must be found for that which exists.
But, such a thing cannot be done without fallacy or assumption. And it is for this reason that I say that the causal principle is assumptive.
By the way, I tried to use underlines, italics, and bold to keep sentences with separate premises and thoughts clear, but it looks pretty messy that way. Sorry about that.