Arguments for God's Existence

[leroy]

if your answer is C then I will simply repeat what I said....

Sparhafoc wrote:
c) suspend taking a position until taking a position becomes credible.

ok that is a valid answer, if you don't think there are good reason to take any position in particular, then you don't have any good reason to reject the KCA


there are many models of the universe that entail a cause, and many other causeless models, do some research and whenever you are ready, let us know which type of models do you find more probably true

I wont have a discussion where I adopt a clear position and you adopt a position of eternal skepticism, if you what to have a discussion with you would have to adopt a world view regarding the cause of the universe and show that your world view is better than mine.

so my position is that the universe (space time and everything in it) had a cause, whenever you are ready please feel free to provide an alterative position and explain why is that position better than mine.

 

[MarsCydonia]

I wont have a discussion where I adopt a clear position and you adopt a position of eternal skepticism, if you what to have a discussion with you would have to adopt a world view regarding the cause of the universe and show that your world view is better than mine.

so my position is that the universe (space time and everything in it) had a cause, whenever you are ready please feel free to provide an alterative position and explain why is that position better than mine.

:facepalm:

You know what "worldview" is superior to yours Leroy? The "I don't know" view because guess what? I don't know and you don't know. It will always be superior to the "I pretend to know" worldview.

How is this still so effing difficult for you to understand?

 

[leroy]

just a quick clarification

Fine. Even though we know it's not true of everything, and that there are events in our universe that are uncaused, we can still fairly generalize that, at least in our Middle World, effects follow causes.

wrong, there are not uncaused events in the universe, when physicist claim that particles came from nothing, they don't mean nothing in the literal sense, for them nothing means "vacuum energy" and vacuum energy is something, (a sea of quantum particles)

in the context quantum mechanics scientists use terms like "nothing" "observer" "emptiness", "non deterministic", "agnostic" etc. and they dont mean what we usually mean when we use these terms

The problem - the one LEROY won't ever address regardless of how many times its written - is that one cannot make the assumption that just because a statement is true for the component pieces, that it's true for the whole. One set is 'things inside the universe' and the other is 'the universe'.

you are making an arbitrary exception, if based on our experience and based on every single observation and bit of evidence things don't come in to existence without a cause, why making an arbitrary exception with the universe?

what makes universes special and inmune to the law of causation?

and why are you choosing the universe as the only arbitrary exception? why not our planet, our solar system, or our galaxy?

why don't you say things like "well everything inside our galaxy has a cause, but that doesn't mean that our galaxy Itself had a cause.?


the point that I am making is that you can not simply make an arbitrary exception with the universe, you need some justification.


given that everything that begins to exist, in our experience has a cause and given that there are no good reasons to make an exception with the universe, it is perfectly rational to conclude something caused the universe.


the reason why I didn't address the argument is because I was waiting for you to adopt a clear position and start the discussion form there,

 

[leroy]

I wont have a discussion where I adopt a clear position and you adopt a position of eternal skepticism, if you what to have a discussion with you would have to adopt a world view regarding the cause of the universe and show that your world view is better than mine.

so my position is that the universe (space time and everything in it) had a cause, whenever you are ready please feel free to provide an alterative position and explain why is that position better than mine.

:facepalm:

You know what "worldview" is superior to yours Leroy? The "I don't know" view because guess what? I don't know and you don't know. It will always be superior to the "I pretend to know" worldview.

How is this still so effing difficult for you to understand?

1 not knowing something doesn't necessarily imply that one view can be better than some other view, you don't need to know with certainty the answer but one can look at causeless models of the universe and compere them with models that entail a cause, and determine which models are better.

2 it applies both ways, if the answer is I don't know then you are admitting that you don't have good reasons to reject the KCA

3 I can do whatever I want, if I personally decide not to discuss with someone who adopts eternal skepticism I am free to do it.

 

[Sparhafoc]

if your answer is C then I will simply repeat what I said....

If you simply repeated what you said, then I will simply reply with C.

I will keep replying with C as I've already told you because you don't get to smuggle in unjustified assumptions. It is not permitted anywhere ever in the world. You are not the tyrant, you do not have a knife at my childrens' throat, and as such I am in no way obliged to simply allow you to assume a postulate that I have already shown to be invalid.

Sorry if this is inconvenient for you, but it remains true regardless of your acceptance.

 

[Sparhafoc]

wrong, there are not uncaused events in the universe, when physicist claim that particles came from nothing, they don't mean nothing in the literal sense, for them nothing means "vacuum energy" and vacuum energy is something, (a sea of quantum particles)

I say that there are problems with the notion of causation in events in our universe without specifying anything, and you reply with a single example which you've... what?.... divined from my mind without the usual step of asking me? as if that then justifies the usage of the word 'wrong' at the beginning?

What a bizarre algorithm you run.

Recursive, LEROY. If you want to just talk to yourself about your own ideas, why do you impose on others?

It can only be that you either a) want to test your own ideas, in which case you surely need the feedback, or b) that you want to hear other ideas.

In either case, declaring someone wrong based solely on the content of your imagination is self-defeating and strangely narcissistic. It won't result in anything more than what we often refer to as 'public masturbation' - you're titillating yourself at my expense, but I am assuredly not part of it and won't be joining in with it.

 

[Sparhafoc]

you are making an arbitrary exception, if based on our experience and based on every single observation and bit of evidence things don't come in to existence without a cause, why making an arbitrary exception with the universe?

Completely wrong.

What's actually happening is that I am not allowing special pleading.

What I said stands for all things, always, and forever. It is a bar by which all things must operate; we must always be cognisant of the problem of induction:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/

The original problem of induction can be simply put. It concerns the support or justification of inductive methods; methods that predict or infer, in Hume's words, that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (THN, 89). Such methods are clearly essential in scientific reasoning as well as in the conduct of our everyday affairs. The problem is how to support or justify them and it leads to a dilemma: the principle cannot be proved deductively, for it is contingent, and only necessary truths can be proved deductively. Nor can it be supported inductively—by arguing that it has always or usually been reliable in the past—for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved.

You cannot make declarations about the point before the origin of the universe that I will accept. You can postulate them, ask me to accept them for 'what if' scenarios, and we can then think about them for fun. But you cannot ever expect me to accept your erroneous assumptions as valid and true. It is not possible. Do not think that any action you can take aside from threatening my life or loved one's lives would result in me allowing you to do that.

Are you now perfectly clear with what my position is and that I will be maintaining this position regardless of your acceptance?

 

[MarsCydonia]

2 it applies both ways, if the answer is I don't know then you are admitting that you don't have good reasons to reject the KCA

"I don't know" is a good reason to reject the KCA.This was explained a thousand times to Leroy.

People saying "I'll just pretend to know" is how you end up with thousand of religions: because they all pretend to know things they actually don't.

God of the gaps: the preferred fallacy of the religious.

 

[Sparhafoc]

2 it applies both ways, if the answer is I don't know then you are admitting that you don't have good reasons to reject the KCA

Yes, indeed.

It applies both ways.

So you don't have good reasons for postulating the KCA.

The default response, the null hypothesis, is ample for dealing with postulates that are based on bad reasoning. Plus, there's onus probandi which is never going to simply roll over and allow passage of ideas that are unsubstantiated.

The answer is as I wrote in my first paragraph: need evidence

Any claim made about 'reality'* in the absence of evidence is not acceptable. It's metaphysics.



* to be honest, the word 'reality' also suggests to me metaphysics. I think we need to be very clear about what we're doing, or we're just doing nothing useful.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Presenting false dichotomies as the only possible answer is unrealistic - even if the answer is ultimately "yes" or "no", replying "unknown" or "nobody knows" is a perfectly valid position given our current level of (lack of) knowledge.

Again, we've dealt with uncaused events in Nature before - an example being radioactivity.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[MarsCydonia]

Yes, indeed.

It applies both ways.

So you don't have good reasons for postulating the KCA.

Wait... are you saying that "pretending to know" is not a good reason?

I'm shocked! That's not what I've been told by christians.

I'll point out something else:

wrong, there are not uncaused events in the universe, when physicist claim that particles came from nothing, they don't mean nothing in the literal sense, for them nothing means "vacuum energy" and vacuum energy is something, (a sea of quantum particles)

What should we get from this?

Is it :facepalm: ?

What Leroy missed is that if "wrong, quantum particles are not uncaused because they do not come from "nothing"", this wouldn't apply to the KCA as copy-pasted from Craig: because in the KCA, the universe doesn't come from a "vacuum energy" nothing, it comes from a "philosophical nothing".

Of course, Leroy will not be able to prove, because Craig never could, that there ever was such a "philosophical nothing". Physicists have repeatedly corrected Craig on his "science".

 

[Sparhafoc]

Incidentally, technical aside:

In my first post in response to questions raised in this thread, I rejected the cosmological argument.

Leroy said I didn't understand it and that my response 'proved' that I didn't understand it.

I then wrote a long rebuttal of WLC's claims, including briefly explaining my rejection of the cosmological argument.

Leroy then said I didn't understand it and that my response 'proved' that I didn't understand it, and then proceeded to try and be patronizing to me pretending we were going to simplify it for my sake.

He then recapitulated the KCA version of the cosmological argument, and I explained why I reject it.

I've been completely consistent throughout.

I have been clear why I reject the postulate.

It might be easier for you, Leroy, to refuse to allow me to own my own position, but it's not something which you are permitted to take away from me.

Any progression in discussion means you are obliged to either contend my position, show me why it's wrong, or you are obliged to accept my rejection and proceed without the identified faulty postulate.

You can't make my position for me.

Please acknowledge that you cannot do this.

 

[Sparhafoc]

What Leroy missed is that if "wrong, quantum particles are not uncaused because they do not come from "nothing"", this wouldn't apply to the KCA as copy-pasted from Craig: because in the KCA, the universe doesn't come from a "vacuum energy" nothing, it comes from a "philosophical nothing".

A salient point, and underscores the problems with these assumptions.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Incidentally, let's have fun with hippo shit. I am not sure why this is always the first thing that comes to mind when I think about exemplifying faulty logic concerning the birth of the universe, but previous allegorical quantities have included penguins leaving tracks in metaphysical snow, and cosmic chickens laying cosmic eggs, but where do the chickens come from?

All hippo shit that exists was shat by a hippo
The universe is a hippo shit
Therefore it was shat by a cosmic hippo

It's fun how you can make valid arguments even when they're not remotely acceptable as being true.

Of course, what everyone knows to do is to challenge the faulty postulates, and that accepting them as true would be madness and would necessarily result in the conclusion being justified.

One never accepts postulates that are comprised of faulty assumptions.

The burden is on the person formulating the argument to ensure that their postulates are acceptable before arriving at a conclusion based on them.

 

[Deleted member 619]

can you please correct Sparhafoc and explain to him that I am not making any unjustified assumption..

I'd love to, except he's correct. It is a false dichotomy, as it begs the question of whether the question is coherent. It's known that some of the things we take for granted in everyday terms fail to have any meaning when applied to the quantum realm, for example, so the fallacy of composition isn't the only fallacy you're committing.

 

[Deleted member 619]

wrong, there are not uncaused events in the universe, when physicist claim that particles came from nothing, they don't mean nothing in the literal sense, for them nothing means "vacuum energy" and vacuum energy is something, (a sea of quantum particles)

Uncaused =/= ex nihilo.

Also, you're confused about what a physicist is talking about when dealing with 'nothing'. Yes, he means 'not precisely nothing', because of the vacuum energy. However, you can't say that pair production (the thing that makes it not nothing) is what virtual particles arise from. That's just asinine. Absent pair production, there literally is nothing.

I covered this in some detail here:

http://reciprocity-giving-something-back.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-certainty-of-uncertainty.html

in the context quantum mechanics scientists use terms like "nothing" "observer" "emptiness", "non deterministic", "agnostic" etc. and they dont mean what we usually mean when we use these terms

This is misleading. All but 'nothing', they use in the same way. In the case of 'observer', they are talking about an observer in the normal sense, that of interacting. The only distinction is that an observer isn't required to be conscious.

given that everything that begins to exist, in our experience has a cause and given that there are no good reasons to make an exception with the universe, it is perfectly rational to conclude something caused the universe.

This is wrong in two ways. The first is that it simply isn't the case that everything in our experience that begins to exist has a cause. The second is that the fallacy of composition is a crystal clear fallacy, and Sparhafoc[/i] has identified it correctly. Again, I cover all of this in detail here:

http://reciprocity-giving-something-back.blogspot.com/2016/03/in-beginning.html

 

[MarsCydonia]

This is wrong in two ways. The first is that it simply isn't the case that everything in our experience that begins to exist has a cause. The second is that the fallacy of composition is a crystal clear fallacy, and Sparhafoc[/i] has identified it correctly. Again, I cover all of this in detail here:

http://reciprocity-giving-something-back.blogspot.com/2016/03/in-beginning.html

That the KCA commits a fallacy of composition is one of the most well-known criticism of ot it.

You would think apologists, even the mostly incompetent ones like Leroy, would not only know their "arguments" but also their common critiques. They almost never do.

 

[Sparhafoc]

can you please correct Sparhafoc and explain to him that I am not making any unjustified assumption..

I'd love to, except he's correct. It is a false dichotomy, as it begs the question of whether the question is coherent. It's known that some of the things we take for granted in everyday terms fail to have any meaning when applied to the quantum realm, for example, so the fallacy of composition isn't the only fallacy you're committing.

The thing is Leroy, it might even have been Hack who first taught me about the problems involved here. If it wasn't him, then he was certainly part of the group of minds involved in exposing what we know about the world, what we don't know, and what can be known that had such a dramatic effect on my own learning. I learned the hard way to be cautious about what I was claiming, through worse spankings than you've ever got, or at least, acknowledged that you've received.

Of course, my writing above is my own, and I formulated my own take on the problem as clearly as I could, but we all stand on the shoulders of giants, all knowledge herein we are simply reporting, not generating ourselves. I think that calls for a little humility.

Of course you couldn't know, but you also didn't ask, whether I had read WLC's 'Does God Exist?' before. I couldn't hope to be accurate, but I would guess that the first time I saw that piece of dreck was over 10 years ago. And I've seen it many, many times since. I am sure Hack would back me up here that this is far from the first time that page has been placed in front of us.

There tends to be a very small set of sources that Creationists go to, recycled again and again. Creationism is where bad ideas go to escape dying.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Aye, many times a year for well over a decade now.

 

[Visaki]

wrong, there are not uncaused events in the universe, when physicist claim that particles came from nothing, they don't mean nothing in the literal sense, for them nothing means "vacuum energy" and vacuum energy is something, (a sea of quantum particles)

Uncaused =/= ex nihilo.

Also, you're confused about what a physicist is talking about when dealing with 'nothing'. Yes, he means 'not precisely nothing', because of the vacuum energy. However, you can't say that pair production (the thing that makes it not nothing) is what virtual particles arise from. That's just asinine. Absent pair production, there literally is nothing.

I covered this in some detail here:

http://reciprocity-giving-something-back.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-certainty-of-uncertainty.html

It just be me nitpicking, but why does leroy have a problem about the existence of vacuum energy and the sea of quantum particles? The point is causality, not if something came ex-nihilo or not, right? As I understand they, causality and creation ex-nihilo, are separate questions. So if a virtual particles can be said to have come from vacuum energy (not sure if this is correct, so if someone knows...) I don't think it means that they are necessary caused.

Or I might be totally wrong in which case I'm sure I'll be corrected.