Evidence

[Enai de a lukal]

At the 'point' of singularity.....it's one or the other.
Spirit First?.....or substance.

I honestly don't know what you mean by that. Are you referring to inflationary cosmology, or what?

The point is that, unless an infinite regress can be ruled out- it has not- there simply is no reason to suppose that anything is required to "get the whole thing started", as it were.

You're appealing to facts not in evidence here, in other words.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

As it happens, I visited the linked thread on the Ontological Argument- how disappointing!

Call of the Wild attempts to modify Plantinga's version of the argument- which is unsound anyways- and makes it laughably worse. What a letdown.

 

[Thief]

I honestly don't know what you mean by that. Are you referring to inflationary cosmology, or what?

The point is that, unless an infinite regress can be ruled out- it has not- there simply is no reason to suppose that anything is required to "get the whole thing started", as it were.

You're appealing to facts not in evidence here, in other words.

Appealing to cause and effect....make a choice....
Spirit first or substance.

 

[cottage]

There certainly isn’t a logical absurdity in conceiving a world without evil and suffering. Christians call such a world “heaven”. Second, in order for you to disprove of God creating a world with evil, you are saying that evil is wrong. Where do you get this sense of right and wrong from? You admit that evil is in this world, which is saying “since evil exists, this isn’t the way that it should be. Something is wrong here”. Well, where are you getting this notion from, if not from your own presupposed moral code?

I thought I’d already made it perfectly plain on at least two previous occasions that his isn’t about my moral code, or my beliefs as to the way things should be. What I am pointing out to you is the classic Problem of Evil (also known as the Inconsistent Triad), which, in simple terms, means there cannot exist evil and a benevolent, omnipotent God.
The problem may also be expressed in this way:

‘evil exists because’:

1) God can do nothing to prevent it occurring.

2) God is not aware that it is occurring

3) God doesn’t intervene or prevent the occurrence

A direct contradiction is implied in each of the three examples: The first is not compatible with God’s omnipotence. The second is not compatible with God’s supposed omnipresence and omniscience (although, omnipresence and omniscience are generally considered a part of omnipotence). And the third is not compatible with the concept of a loving God.

Evil is a possible choice if there is a thing called “free will”. What does it mean to commit an evil act? It means that an act was committed that should not have been committed. If someone doesn’t have the ability to freely choose which act to commit, then that person doesn’t have free will. God cannot “make” someone “freely” chose to do something. Evil acts are committed by those that freely choose to commit them.

The essence of the free will defence is that God created the best possible world, and a world containing free moral agents is better than one containing mere automata. And so God gave his creation of free moral agents the ability to make choices for themselves, but if his creation were to be truly free the choices could not be prescribed or limited. Therefore it is mankind, not God, who is responsible for moral evil, for whilst God made evil possible it was mankind that made it actual. But is that a satisfactory defence? There appears to be a shifting of responsibility that is hardly justified. Theists often argue that evil is attributable to secondary causation, which is to say if A kills B, then B is killed by A, not God. But this line of defence doesn't answer the Problem of Evil or the contradiction that results, for secondary causation is by definition an effect, since theists would want to say God is the indisputable First Cause.If a person were to put two fighting dogs in a cage together and one killed the other, the dog’s death occurred because the person made the event possible, and the person’s actions, in turn, occurred because God allowed them to be actual. For if nothing is beyond God’s knowledge and nothing occurs that isn’t God’s will it follows from the logical admission that in God making evil possible that he also caused it to be actual, since whatever occurs can only be in accordance with what he willed.

I wouldn’t take it that far. Evil is the result of a choice that is made. Now, God created humans with free will to do right or wrong, but what he cant do is guarantee that everyone will make the right choice. Evil is the result of people making wrong choices and it is not God’s fault that humans take their free will and abuse it by making wrong choices.

In that case you are admitting that god was challenged and usurped by his own creation! A contradiction, if God is omnipotent!

Think about it this way; since the dawn of mankind, if no one EVER committed an evil act, then there would be NO EVIL now would there? So if you blame God for “creating evil”, all you are saying is “I blame God for giving man the ability to commit evil acts”. Well, it was necessary for God to give man the ability to commit evil acts, because guess what……………there cant be free will without man being able to make the right choice or the wrong choice.

And in that case you are admitting that free will, and the occurrence of evil, is of a greater moral worth than the alleviation of suffering! A contradiction if God is all loving!

Absolutely. But it is my personal opinion that we can’t fully appreciate the joys of heaven if we didn’t experience the pain and suffering on earth. 50 Cent said it best in his rap song “Many Men”. He said

“Sunny days wouldn’t be special, if it wasn’t for rain”
“Joy wouldn’t feel so good, if it wasn’t for pain”

That response simply re-states and confirms the Problem of evil.

Well, he had two options. Either he could create human robots that would be “programmed” to do what he wanted them to do. Or, he could create humans with the ability to think and reason, capable of freely making the right and wrong choices on their on. It is only the latter choice that would result in evil acts by people, because God can’t guarantee that his people will make the right choices, given there free will.

No, he didn’t have only two options. God did not lie under any compunction to create the world, humans - or evil.

 

[cottage]

That still doesn’t change the fact that all possible necessary truths must in fact be necessarily truth. Either it is possible for God to exist as a necessary truth, or impossible. If it is possible, it must be true. The question is, which one is it?? I think the concept of God is logically coherent and unless someone can show otherwise, I don’t see any good reason why admitting that such a being’s existence is possible is so difficult, unless one is denying this because they are aware of the implications.

Anything is possible, if it doesn’t imply a contradiction or some other absurdity (ie an impossible concept), gods, demons, pixies, vampires, sprites, unicorns, zombies etc. But from a thing being possible it doesn’t follow that it is actual, and from the concept of a thing the appellation ‘necessary’, a mere term, does not impose actual existence upon it. In any case and further to my point God’s supposed existence is not a necessary truth since, unlike the example 2 + 2 = 4, the conclusion of every argument to that end can be denied without contradiction. For regardless of any argument ‘There is no God’ is not self-contradictory. And there is a litmus test we can apply to that assertion.

Second, as far as intuitiveness, I think it is on the same level based on the possibility of an actual infinity. Once it is demonstrated that an infinite chain of events is impossible, it becomes apparent that there had to be one uncaused cause. This is intuitive and it is based on the law of excluded middle.

Well I don’t think it is at all on the same level, for you’re speaking of intuitiveness based on inference, when the causal principle itself may be doubted.

And why is it a problem for God being conditioned in this sense?

Because God would be contingent.

No, since the world is contingent it must OWE ITS EXISTENCE to a necessary being.

Nooo! Contingent matter may not be. Necessary being is certain – if it exists! But there is no necessary, causal connection between the world (object) and God (the concept).

Um, cot. Anything that you can think of in the natural universe, anything and everything…every material physical object in the material world owes its existence to something else. Nothing is the origin of its own domain. That is the nature of contingency. Necessity is the exact opposite, and you will be very hard pressed to find any kind of entity, whether material or otherwise that doesn’t fall under those two categories.

Yes, indeed! Just as you say, we agree that we are hard pressed to find any kind of entity that that isn’t material. But where are the necessary entities you speak of? (!)

What contingent features?

Causation!

I don’t see the distinction.

The actual world we say is contingent, that is to say the thing may or may not be whatever it is while the concept of necessity supposes an object that is not contingent, which means quite simply that the supposed object, a necessary being, exists by its own nature and answers to no other thing. But it is only by an arbitrary act of the mind that we award the further concept of eternity or an everlasting existence to the concept of necessity in this case. To speak of a necessary being is not to say it necessarily exists or that it is the cause of contingent being and that is why we have the Argument from Contingency, which presumes to provide the missing link.

 

[chinu]

I'll preface this by stating that I am atheistic. However, I have a very religious friend, and I am trying to see things from his perspective. What I am trying to understand, at a very basic level, is how someone can believe in a supernatural deity. There simply is no credible evidence to support the existence of one. Arguments like, "Well, then, where did all of this come from?" don't work because all they do is make the situation even more complicated. What created the creator? Then, it seems to me that tremendous amounts of (for lack of a better word) insanity are constructed around this belief in a mystic being (or beings). There are entire doctrines, entire codes of ethics, entire books that claim to have all the answers, but they are vague and antiquated. Even within the same religious tree, people can't agree on what they are supposed to mean. How can anyone view something so ambiguous, be it the Quran or the Bible or any other text, as a legitimate source of information or even guidance? Why is it that new religions, such as Scientology, are met with such disgust even though, objectively speaking, they are no more absurd? I mean no disrespect. I simply do not understand.

One cannot have belief in God, until God himself may give any proof of his existence.Thus, If there's any shortfall, its that you are trying to understand God, you need not God, indeed. There's big difference between the person who "Need to understand God", and the one who just "Need God".

God gives proof to the one who "Need God", he never gives proof to the one who "Need to understand God", and before going on to any conclusion you need to search yourself and make this confirm, IMO.

 

[cottage]

Give me an example because there are quite a few ways to take this.

The essence of the Hippocratic Oath: 'never to do any harm'.

So spanking a child along with prison and jail systems is wrong? Second…what is evil? Evil is the opposite of holiness. But in order to be evil or commit evil acts, you have to choose to do so, right? In order to freely choose to do so, you have to be given both options, right?

This particular apologetic I refer to as the Parent/Child analogy as it is frequently used in that way to defend the existence of evil, where it is said that God is like the parent who may have to subject a child to an element of suffering as punishment for misdemeamors or in order for it to learn and be aware of life’s pitfalls. But this analogy makes two misleading assumptions: it assumes that the world, as it is, must exist, and that God is like man. Suffering is a feature of our world and parents have no option but to deal with it the best they can. But it is clearly mistaken to say an omnipotent God had no option but to create the world as we know it. For if God is the absolutely necessary Being then neither suffering nor the world itself exist necessarily but purely by his will alone.

Defenders of the parent/child analogy might say ‘Must a parent be responsible for every transgression the child makes in its life?’ A fair question! For while the parents brought about the existence of the child, it can be argued that the parents themselves were caused by God and are essentially no different from their offspring in that respect. They too are finite, temporal, error-prone creatures. Therefore the parents cannot be held directly responsible for the child’s every action. And that must be correct, because if God is the Creator, the first cause and the cause of all subsequent causes, the parents themselves must be a contingent effect. But if God is the necessary being, the cause of all causes and one who conserves and sustains every minute of our existence, then it follows that every minute of that existence lies under God’s causal power and knowledge. In other words, if it is true that we cannot exist without God’s sustaining power and awareness, then it is also true that we cannot act independently of it.

Well, it works for me.

And yet even you don’t believe in God because of the OA!

So lets break it down then. Do you believe that for something to be necessarily true, it must exist in all possible worlds? Yes or No. We will take it step by step

.

As a concept - well of course! Now please go to my next reply.

Well, this wont work for the simply fact that you may very well conceive of God not existing, but if God does actually exist as a necessary being, then how you conceive him doesn’t really mean anything.

But I understood you to be asserting that God’s existence is a necessary truth! And that being the case it would be impossible to deny as it would to say A is not A. Just try to conceive of a thing – anything – not being the same as itself (God as not-God would be a suitable example for you)?

I can conceive of a universe full of mermaids, but whether or not a universe full of mermaids exists is independent of what I think of them. That is one of the reasons why Anslems version is rejected. This is not “thinking” something in to existence. This is a matter of examining the logical coherency of certain possibilities.

I’m sorry but you’re coming from the diametrically wrong direction here. It isn’t a case of what we might think exists but what cannot be thought to exist. A concept as a definitional truth cannot be conceived as other than what it is; a two-sided triangle is an impossible conception, for example. But all objects, whether actual or imagined, are possible beings and since their non-being is not confutable any objects thus conceived can never be necessarily existent, and nor can any concept or proposition be the cause of an object remaining always in existence, and in all cases what can be thought false cannot at the same time be thought true.

Well answer me this; If you lived in the 3rd century and while hiking you stumbled across a space shuttle, would you believe that the space shuttle “just is”..or would you believe there is a reason for the space shuttle’s existence, which requires an external cause?

Absolutely an external cause! Living in the third century I’m sure I would have considered such a find to be revelatory, a gift from the gods or an idol to be worshipped.

How do you get the ability to think and learn from an entity that lacks the ability to think or learn?

I’ll return the question to you but in a significantly different form: How do you have the ability to think and learn from an entity (God) that by definition does not think and learn?

 

[cottage]

Oops! I missed this one:

Neither do I and neither does God.

In that case he is undermined by his own creation, which means he is a poor artificer or just plain incompetent - but in either case certainly not omnipotent.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Appealing to cause and effect....make a choice....
Spirit first or substance.

Why are you having such a difficult time spitting out what you're trying to say here? Or are you being mysterious on purpose?

So you are hinting at (rather than, you know, actually presenting) something like the causal argument for the existence of God? (You know, the one that has been recognized as invalid for... well, centuries...)

EVEN IF one is inclined to accept the (non-existent) argument against an infinite regression of cause and effect (which would obviously remove the need to "make a choice", since the sequence of cause and effect would just go back indefinitely)- there is no reason to posit any nonsensical "spirit" as the initial cause- and worse, there is no reason to suppose that these causal sequences must all have originated in one initial cause (of course, this is the intended conclusion, for which the entire argument is measured); this simply does not follow.

The causal argument, at best, leads to the conclusion that there was at least one "uncaused causes" to get the whole sequence of cause and effect started- and no more. (Nor does it follow that this/these uncaused cause(s) must still exist- it/they could have long since been destroyed or become deceased...)

Clearly, this is miles away from the desired conclusion that anything remotely resembling any god, much less the Christian one, ever existed.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

The "mind" is an emergent property of the brain. Just because the mind cannot be reduced to neurons doesn't mean that neurons can't produce the mind. The following real-life analogy should take care off all your analogies about the mind. I'm going to demonstrate to you that individual units can be made up of parts yet produce properties like a "mind' which are more than the parts.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of complex coordinated activity mindless ants can do, here's a picture of them forming a living bridge to get across:
Like neurons, when you have enough ants configured in the right way, suddenly you get a "hive mind" of a colony. This:


is addressed the same way. Why do even 1,000 ants or a billion ants (all queens) just die, but a colony acts like a single organism? Because the parts produce something greater than the whole. The mind is a property of the brain, just like the complex, coordinated behaviors of colonies are products of the whole colony. You can't stick neurons together and get a mind any more than you can with certain insect colonies. However, you can get a mind when the parts are able to produce more than their sum.n

Ants have a type of thinking capacity. Now whether you want to call this thinking capacity a “mind” is up to you. But ants do have some type of thinking capacity. My point is simply the mind is not dependent upon the brain to exist. The brain cannot be used to explain the origin of the mind. The only thing we can show is that they correlate, but this doesn’t explain origins. Your thoughts, memories, sensations, etc, none of these things are made up of matter. Your thoughts are not material substances. But your brain is, so what is true of your brain is not true or your mind. Thus, one cannot be used to explain the origins of the other.

I am saying things can be caused without time. As I said, we've observed this in e.g., two particles by miles behaving in ways caused by connections that occur without time/in no-time.

There can be no change without time, Legion. Let me repeat, THERE CAN BE NO CHANGE WITHOUT TIME. Anything that is in motion is changing, thus, TIME. If something is “behaving”, it is in time. There is no way out of this, legion. No matter how many paragraphs you want to type, or how many books or articles you want to paste on here, there cannot be any change without time. This is true regardless of physics, biology, chemistry, or any other branch of science you want to use. There can be no change without time.

Second, you assume the universe had to be created because of infinite regression, but even if we grant that there must be at least a first cause, there is no reason that there needs to be one.

Yes there is reason that it need to be a first cause. Infinite regress is impossible. If we can demonstrate the impossibility of infinite regression (which we can), then the only option available is there was a first cause which existed externally from the universe. There are no other options, Legion. Any cosmological model that you use will have to be a temporal one, thus, infinite regression. It is IMPOSSIBLE for there to have been an eternal cause and effect chain which gave rise to the present chain. This is impossible, and it can very well be demonstrated. The only option left is for there to have been a transcendent cause who was not itself within time. That is the only other option. One option is impossible and can/should be disregarded, while the other option makes good logical sense. Now I understand that this is hard for you to accept as a non-theist and you must do everything within your power to make it so that this isn’t the case. But there is nothing you can do because it is awfully hard to rebuttal the truth.

That is, instead of something causing the universe, the universe was the beginning of causation.

Legion, the universe began to exist some 13.7 billion years ago. How could the universe be the beginning of causation when it itself was the product of causation?

We do not need to assume the universe was ever caused (as we're dealing with causation that doesn't involve time)

Once again, the universe began to exist, Legion. And no one is saying this causation didn’t involve time. Time began simultaneously with the creation of the universe. One didn’t exist prior to the other.

so it there is no reason to think that what you call the beginning of the universe was really only many uncaused things beginning causation.

Infinite regress is impossible, Legion.

Let's say a car salesperson gives you a price. But as it's too high, you say "If you reduce the price by $300, then I'll buy the car". She doesn't do this. So, true to your word, you don't buy the car.

That's because what you said meant "on the condition that it is true you will reduce the price by $300, I will buy the car." Likewise, "If a MGB exists...then..." is just like you buying the car. Like the car, it rests upon whether or not the "if" part is true. In the car situation, it wasn't true, and you didn't buy the car. Same thing here: if X exists...." is just another way of saying "assuming that X exists", and therefore all one needs to do is not assume it.

Um, Legion, whether or not X exist is not dependent upon what is assumed and what is not assumed. If you don’t assume that God exists, that has nothing to do with the truth value of whether God actually does exist. A person in Japan may assume that I DON’T exist, but yet, here I am: EXISTING. So your analogy doesn’t work my friend.

1) Your "premise" makes the entire argument pointless.
2)Your statements are a convoluted mishmash of nonsense formed by collapsing different terms which mean the same thing into a sea of redundant, illogical statements. To see what an actual model proof is: Basic Concepts in Modal Logic

Please respond directly to the premises of the argument and demonstrate why they are false. I need specifics, not rhetoric.

From sect. 2.3 Standad Cosmology of this book: "Exactly at the time of the Big Bang some fourteen billion years ago, it is reckoned, all the matter and energy of the Universe was concentrated at a single point, where the density and curvature would be infinite."

That is used as a hyperbole to explain the extremity of the singularity. It is not meant to be used in terms of quantity.

From a less technical book: "Tracing the evolution predicted by the standard model backward in time even beyond the Planck radius, the Universe necessarily reaches a singular stage where the temperature becomes infinite, the curvature radius c/H is then zero, and its reciprocal (the curvature) therefore becomes infinite"

I can cite journals, monographs, books for general readers, edited volumes, etc., and repeat the same thing: the standard model includes actual infinities.

The same thing. All matter and energy was so compressed that there was no space…and the only way to describe such extreme conditions would be say the “temperature becomes infinite”. It is not used in the sense of quantity because think about it, infinity is not something you can take away from and get less. So if space expanded and things cooled off sense then, then how was it actually infinite in the first place? If you have an infinite amount of marbles and you give me three, you would still have an infinite amount of marbles. It can’t become “un-infinite” if it was an actual infinity.

 

[idav]

Ants have a type of thinking capacity. Now whether you want to call this thinking capacity a “mind” is up to you. But ants do have some type of thinking capacity. My point is simply the mind is not dependent upon the brain to exist. The brain cannot be used to explain the origin of the mind. The only thing we can show is that they correlate, but this doesn’t explain origins. Your thoughts, memories, sensations, etc, none of these things are made up of matter. Your thoughts are not material substances. But your brain is, so what is true of your brain is not true or your mind. Thus, one cannot be used to explain the origins of the other.



There can be no change without time, Legion. Let me repeat, THERE CAN BE NO CHANGE WITHOUT TIME. Anything that is in motion is changing, thus, TIME. If something is “behaving”, it is in time. There is no way out of this, legion. No matter how many paragraphs you want to type, or how many books or articles you want to paste on here, there cannot be any change without time. This is true regardless of physics, biology, chemistry, or any other branch of science you want to use. There can be no change without time.



Yes there is reason that it need to be a first cause. Infinite regress is impossible. If we can demonstrate the impossibility of infinite regression (which we can), then the only option available is there was a first cause which existed externally from the universe. There are no other options, Legion. Any cosmological model that you use will have to be a temporal one, thus, infinite regression. It is IMPOSSIBLE for there to have been an eternal cause and effect chain which gave rise to the present chain. This is impossible, and it can very well be demonstrated. The only option left is for there to have been a transcendent cause who was not itself within time. That is the only other option. One option is impossible and can/should be disregarded, while the other option makes good logical sense. Now I understand that this is hard for you to accept as a non-theist and you must do everything within your power to make it so that this isn’t the case. But there is nothing you can do because it is awfully hard to rebuttal the truth.



Legion, the universe began to exist some 13.7 billion years ago. How could the universe be the beginning of causation when it itself was the product of causation?



Once again, the universe began to exist, Legion. And no one is saying this causation didn’t involve time. Time began simultaneously with the creation of the universe. One didn’t exist prior to the other.



Infinite regress is impossible, Legion.



Um, Legion, whether or not X exist is not dependent upon what is assumed and what is not assumed. If you don’t assume that God exists, that has nothing to do with the truth value of whether God actually does exist. A person in Japan may assume that I DON’T exist, but yet, here I am: EXISTING. So your analogy doesn’t work my friend.



Please respond directly to the premises of the argument and demonstrate why they are false. I need specifics, not rhetoric.




That is used as a hyperbole to explain the extremity of the singularity. It is not meant to be used in terms of quantity.



The same thing. All matter and energy was so compressed that there was no space…and the only way to describe such extreme conditions would be say the “temperature becomes infinite”. It is not used in the sense of quantity because think about it, infinity is not something you can take away from and get less. So if space expanded and things cooled off sense then, then how was it actually infinite in the first place? If you have an infinite amount of marbles and you give me three, you would still have an infinite amount of marbles. It can’t become “un-infinite” if it was an actual infinity.

The point of the singularity is infinite because not only is there no space but ther is no spacetime either.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

This particular apologetic I refer to as the Parent/Child analogy as it is frequently used in that way to defend the existence of evil, where it is said that God is like the parent who may have to subject a child to an element of suffering as punishment for misdemeamors or in order for it to learn and be aware of life’s pitfalls. But this analogy makes two misleading assumptions: it assumes that the world, as it is, must exist, and that God is like man. Suffering is a feature of our world and parents have no option but to deal with it the best they can. But it is clearly mistaken to say an omnipotent God had no option but to create the world as we know it. For if God is the absolutely necessary Being then neither suffering nor the world itself exist necessarily but purely by his will alone.

To be honest with you Cot, I am still trying to figure out whether the attribute of “omnibenevolence” is a necessary attribute for a MGB. The other three are, but I am not so sure about this one. However, I do believe that the moral argument is a strong one. But getting to your point about suffering; Think about all types of suffering and ask yourself how much of this suffering could be prevented?

If you are suffering because of personal finances, could you have done things to prevent it? I think about my personal finances going back to the last five years…and ALL of my financial woes were a result of my own personal choices. All of them. None of my financial woes just “happened” out of the clear blue sky. NONE OF THEM. I can blame no one but myself.

Think about personal health, and those that suffer from physical ailments. How much of this could be prevented? Do you smoke or drink (not you personally, but in general). Do you maintain a healthy diet and active lifestyle? Do you have unprotected sex? Are you involved with the wrong crowd? Are you involved in high risk behaviors and habits?? The vast majority of physical ailments that we are faced with comes from a series of personal choices on our part that caught up with us in the long run. Outside physical ailments that stems from genetics, the majority of the things we go to the doctors office for are for things that we could have prevented ourselves.

If a gang member is in ICU getting ready to breath his last breath because he was shot by a rival gang member…personal choice. The morbidly obese man that is in the hospital because of problems with diabetes..personal choice…the woman that has been smoking for 30 years and has lungs darker than Bernie Mac…personal choice. Our physical health not only effects us physically, but also emotionally, and it also effects our loved ones. Family members and loved ones share the grief, affecting their emotional health as well.

So when you talk about suffering, the VAST majority of suffering comes from our own personal choices that we make in life. Now, there are cases where our suffering is a result from others, but this is very few and far in-between. So how can God be blamed for suffering? Our suffering comes from poor decision making on our part and God shouldn’t be used as the escape goat.

Defenders of the parent/child analogy might say ‘Must a parent be responsible for every transgression the child makes in its life?’ A fair question! For while the parents brought about the existence of the child, it can be argued that the parents themselves were caused by God and are essentially no different from their offspring in that respect. They too are finite, temporal, error-prone creatures. Therefore the parents cannot be held directly responsible for the child’s every action. And that must be correct, because if God is the Creator, the first cause and the cause of all subsequent causes, the parents themselves must be a contingent effect. But if God is the necessary being, the cause of all causes and one who conserves and sustains every minute of our existence, then it follows that every minute of that existence lies under God’s causal power and knowledge. In other words, if it is true that we cannot exist without God’s sustaining power and awareness, then it is also true that we cannot act independently of it.

But the choices you make in life are your own personal choices. All God can do is influence you to make the right choice, but ultimately, the choice is yours. For example, me and the wife was at the grocery store. One thing about the wife is, she is very good on knowing what is on sale and the cost of things. I told her I had a taste for steak, so we went to the meat department. We get to the meat department and I see three steaks in one pack (I don’t know the cut), and I told her I wanted that one. She picked out two packs of single steaks and told me it would be cheaper to get the two big ones, because they were bigger and costs less. But I was stuck on getting the three smaller ones and despite her trying her best to influence me on buying the bigger ones, I stuck to my original choice lol.

My point is, her influence was there, but the choice was mines. God doesn’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. He will tell you what he think, but he will not force you. We have free will, and we all live and die by our own choices.

And yet even you don’t believe in God because of the OA!

Let me tell you the story about me and the OA. I am a big WLC fan. He is the reason why Christian Apologetics is so prominent in my life right now, even though I was always a defender of the faith but he helped me take it to “another level”. If you know WLC, you know he uses the kalam argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, and the argument based on the resurrection of Jesus. Those are his main arguments that he use and defend. When I first became a fan of his by watching his debates, lectures, or listening to his podcasts and reading his articles and books, he would always briefly “touch” on the OA. When he first briefly touched on it, it was new to me so I decided to do my own research on it, but I found it to be too technical, and this only was after briefly scanning the argument.

I was listening to one of his podcasts and a question was asked to him by a follower of his’, and the question was something like “do you have to have a degree in philosophy or science to become a good apologists”. And his answer was no, all you have to do is find two or three arguments that you enjoy and learn to defend those arguments, and you don’t have to have degrees in the fields to do this, but you do have to educate yourself on the subject matter. I thought this was a good idea.

So I decided to pick three arguments that were of great interest to me. I didn’t want to completely go WLC’s route, because I find the teleological argument to be good, but much too technical. I find the moral argument to be good, but not quite strong enough, yet good. I find the kalam argument to absolutely great, so I decided to stick with the kalam. Thanks to J.P. Moreland, I found out about the argument from consciousness, which I found to be VERY interesting and VERY good. So I decided to use that one as well. That is two: the kalam and the argument from consciousness. I only needed one more.

I think someone had asked WLC what if science didn’t confirm the finitude of the universe, and he responded by saying you can prove the finitude of the based on the problems of infinity and there are other arguments theists can use, with the OA being one of them and how this argument doesn’t use science at all but in his opinion was logically valid and sound. Now at this point the OA was long gone from my mind, but he mentioned it again, and I still needed one more argument, so I decided to do further research on it and force myself to understand the argument. So I found an excellent website that addresses the argument in good detail, and it took me about two-three days to fully understand it. And not only can I say I understand it, but I can’t believe what I have been missing out on. I think it is a fascinating argument after all and I love discussing it. So you are right, I don’t believe in God because of it, but I think it does a good job of supplementing the other arguments.

Being a Christian Apologistis, I also have to examine and study the argument based on the Resurrection of Jesus, which is what I am currently working on.

I just had to vent lol.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

But I understood you to be asserting that God’s existence is a necessary truth! And that being the case it would be impossible to deny as it would to say A is not A. Just try to conceive of a thing – anything – not being the same as itself (God as not-God would be a suitable example for you)?

I am saying God’s existence is a necessary truth because it is POSSIBLE for it to be a necessary truth. Nothing that exists within the universe is necessarily true, and since God is said to exist externally from the universe, his existence would have to be necessary.

I’m sorry but you’re coming from the diametrically wrong direction here. It isn’t a case of what we might think exists but what cannot be thought to exist. A concept as a definitional truth cannot be conceived as other than what it is; a two-sided triangle is an impossible conception, for example. But all objects, whether actual or imagined, are possible beings and since their non-being is not confutable any objects thus conceived can never be necessarily existent, and nor can any concept or proposition be the cause of an object remaining always in existence, and in all cases what can be thought false cannot at the same time be thought true.

And my point is based on the absurdity that would result in God NOT existing (infinite regression). The cause of space,time, matter is not something that could be contingent, but IS instead something which does not depend on anything outside itself for its existence and therefore exists NECESSARILY. So this is double trouble for the critic, because we have two reasons to believe that a MGB exists, the first is it is possible for it to exist and all possible necessary truths must exist…and the second is the fact that of the only two options available, the one is successfully negated so the other one wins by default, which happen to be the option of “necessity”.

Absolutely an external cause! Living in the third century I’m sure I would have considered such a find to be revelatory, a gift from the gods or an idol to be worshipped.

My point exactly!!! So why not look at the universe as a gift from the gods?

I’ll return the question to you but in a significantly different form: How do you have the ability to think and learn from an entity (God) that by definition does not think and learn?

Who said God does not think and learn? If God wanted to play the guessing game with you and he said “I am THINKING of a number from 1-10, what number am I thinking of”. Is he not thinking?

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

The point of the singularity is infinite because not only is there no space but ther is no spacetime either.

My point exactly. So what is infinite then? You can't say space because there was no space. You cant say time because there was no time?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The brain cannot be used to explain the origin of the mind.

That's a premise. Unlike your fantasy analogies, "hive minds" and colonies actually exist. We can watch a bunch of ants that aren't a colony just repeat motions until they die. And we can watch a colony composed of these mindless, brainless ants to things most mammals can't. Because the property of this "mind" is only a property of the whole. And when you can explain how that happens, and how it doesn't resemble an emergent human mind, then you can dismiss the analogy.

Your thoughts, memories, sensations, etc, none of these things are made up of matter.

We have shown that much of this is wrong. If you damage "matter" in the brain memories can disappear, personalities can change, the ability to form new memories can be erased. All because of changes to matter.

There can be no change without time, Legion. Let me repeat, THERE CAN BE NO CHANGE WITHOUT TIME.

Let's assume that this is true. Let's further assume the universe "began" to exist at one point. And finally, let's assume that whatever we'd call the kind of reality that existed when the universe had not begun was a reality without time. Since there can be no change without time, any such reality can't ever change. Whatever reality that existed such that the universe "began to exist" was a reality in which change was impossible. So the universe cannot have begun to exist, as that is a change, and there can be no changes in this "no universe" reality.

There is no way out of this, legion

.
There's decades of experiments showing you are wrong. You don't know about them, of course, but just because you can access simplified versions of various theological proofs doesn't mean you understand what you are saying.

There can be no change without time.

Then the universe never existed.

Yes there is reason that it need to be a first cause.

Why?

Infinite regress is impossible.

Why? You repeat what you've read over and over again, but all you can muster to defend your statements is "that's absurd" or simply repeating yourself.

How could the universe be the beginning of causation when it itself was the product of causation?

First there's the problem with your treatment of science research:

The BGV theorem already proved that any universe that has been expanding for an average Hubble expansion of greater than 0 must have had a beginning. This is a FACT, Legion.

If it is a fact, then why does one of the authors of the study (the V in BGV), state only that "at this point, it seems the answer [to whether the universe had a beginning] is yes" (source)? Or elsewhere state "The validity of the BGV theorem is not in question, but its interpretation has generated some controversy" (source)? Why does Guth (the G in BGV) state there while there is a boundary in the "is of course no conclusion" even if we accept the BGV "inflating model" that it "must have a unique beginning"? And finally, why do we find studies like "Inflation without a beginning: a null boundary proposal"? Possibly, because this is how you treat science research:
I devoted a whole page (and more) to the ways you mischaracterized Penrose, the big bang, and "science" here and again here. You still persisted in your inaccurate descriptions of cosmology and physics and in the process you dismissed someone who actually is in this field here.

Then there are the ways that do not have to do with physics:
Among other ways:
1) A first cause argument that assumes both that the universe was this first cause and that there cannot be uncaused things that began a causal chain (or began causation)
2) Your idea of causation is outdated and incorrect. I have given you multiple links to freely accessible versions of published studies that demonstrate your assumptions about causality have been empirically invalidated for decades.

Infinite regress is impossible, Legion.

Prove it.

If you don’t assume that God exists, that has nothing to do with the truth value of whether God actually does exist

The point is the argument assumes God exists. It's just like this: "If God exists, then God is all-powerful". How might this be refuted? Simply by saying God doesn't exist. Every conditional is an assumption. "If a MGB exists..." can be refuted easily: a MGB doesn't exist. You've only talked about what would follow if certain things are true, but that doesn't make them true.

. A person in Japan may assume that I DON’T exist, but yet, here I am: EXISTING. So your analogy doesn’t work my friend.

Let's say that person in Japan says that if you don't exist, she'll buy a car. You do exist, so she doesn't. If x, then y, means assuming x is true, then y is true.

Please respond directly to the premises of the argument and demonstrate why they are false.

I gave you that in the post you are quoting from. You ignored it. Again.

That is used as a hyperbole

You are wrong. You have challenged others to open textbooks but have offered none and when presented with what actual cosmologists say in things you've never read, you claim the statement is hyperbole. On what basis?

 

[idav]

My point exactly. So what is infinite then? You can't say space because there was no space. You cant say time because there was no time?

But there was something in this "no time" which is another way to say a first cause in a state infinite.

 

[cottage]

To be honest with you Cot, I am still trying to figure out whether the attribute of “omnibenevolence” is a necessary attribute for a MGB. The other three are, but I am not so sure about this one. However, I do believe that the moral argument is a strong one. But getting to your point about suffering; Think about all types of suffering and ask yourself how much of this suffering could be prevented?

Yes I agree with you from a non-partisan viewpoint that benevolence isn’t a necessary attribute of God, although Plantinga thought it was. Benevolence isn’t logically necessary to the concept and it must always be confounded by the evidential case that can be made from the fact of evil.

If you are suffering because of personal finances, could you have done things to prevent it? I think about my personal finances going back to the last five years…and ALL of my financial woes were a result of my own personal choices. All of them. None of my financial woes just “happened” out of the clear blue sky. NONE OF THEM. I can blame no one but myself.

If a gang member is in ICU getting ready to breath his last breath because he was shot by a rival gang member…personal choice. The morbidly obese man that is in the hospital because of problems with diabetes..personal choice…the woman that has been smoking for 30 years and has lungs darker than Bernie Mac…personal choice. Our physical health not only effects us physically, but also emotionally, and it also effects our loved ones. Family members and loved ones share the grief, affecting their emotional health as well.

So when you talk about suffering, the VAST majority of suffering comes from our own personal choices that we make in life. Now, there are cases where our suffering is a result from others, but this is very few and far in-between. So how can God be blamed for suffering? Our suffering comes from poor decision making on our part and God shouldn’t be used as the escape goat.

But the choices you make in life are your own personal choices. All God can do is influence you to make the right choice, but ultimately, the choice is yours. For example, me and the wife was at the grocery store. One thing about the wife is, she is very good on knowing what is on sale and the cost of things. I told her I had a taste for steak, so we went to the meat department. We get to the meat department and I see three steaks in one pack (I don’t know the cut), and I told her I wanted that one. She picked out two packs of single steaks and told me it would be cheaper to get the two big ones, because they were bigger and costs less. But I was stuck on getting the three smaller ones and despite her trying her best to influence me on buying the bigger ones, I stuck to my original choice lol.

My point is, her influence was there, but the choice was mines. God doesn’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. He will tell you what he think, but he will not force you. We have free will, and we all live and die by our own choices.

It would appear that the notion of free will was introduced for no other reason than to address the uncomfortable fact of evil in the presence of a supposedly good and wise God; it has no other purpose. I think most people are uncomfortable with the idea of a vengeful and bloodthirsty Old Testament God. Although free will isn’t mentioned in the Bible it's writers knew they could say or claim almost anything: talking snakes, a man rounding up two of every animal on the globe and putting them in a boat, feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fish, dead men rising from their graves etc, etc, but for all their imagination they couldn't deny the unfortunate fact of evil. Quite understandably it would be better if God could be presented as the essence of pure love, but unfortunately the Bible’s writers had to acknowledge the existence of evil as a plain fact, and so the only accommodation left to them was to present the deity as a loving God who justly punishes wicked human evildoers. But if God is the omnipotent creator, the cause of all existent things, and evil exists, then it does so only because God causes and sustains its existence, since nothing can exist independent of God’s will. The New Testament and Jesus might be an imaginative attempt to deal with the problem – but in the end it only compounded it. Jesus came and went and suffering continues unabated. We don't have a choice. There never was any 'choice'. We are error-prone, imperfect creatures who acted exactly as God knew we would. The choice was simply a mechanism contrived by believers to insulate God from the evil in the world. And it fails because the world is God's creation: no God, no world, and therefore no evil.

Let me tell you the story about me and the OA. I am a big WLC fan. He is the reason why Christian Apologetics is so prominent in my life right now, even though I was always a defender of the faith but he helped me take it to “another level”. If you know WLC, you know he uses the kalam argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, and the argument based on the resurrection of Jesus. Those are his main arguments that he use and defend. When I first became a fan of his by watching his debates, lectures, or listening to his podcasts and reading his articles and books, he would always briefly “touch” on the OA. When he first briefly touched on it, it was new to me so I decided to do my own research on it, but I found it to be too technical, and this only was after briefly scanning the argument.

I was listening to one of his podcasts and a question was asked to him by a follower of his’, and the question was something like “do you have to have a degree in philosophy or science to become a good apologists”. And his answer was no, all you have to do is find two or three arguments that you enjoy and learn to defend those arguments, and you don’t have to have degrees in the fields to do this, but you do have to educate yourself on the subject matter. I thought this was a good idea.

So I decided to pick three arguments that were of great interest to me. I didn’t want to completely go WLC’s route, because I find the teleological argument to be good, but much too technical. I find the moral argument to be good, but not quite strong enough, yet good. I find the kalam argument to absolutely great, so I decided to stick with the kalam. Thanks to J.P. Moreland, I found out about the argument from consciousness, which I found to be VERY interesting and VERY good. So I decided to use that one as well. That is two: the kalam and the argument from consciousness. I only needed one more.

I think someone had asked WLC what if science didn’t confirm the finitude of the universe, and he responded by saying you can prove the finitude of the based on the problems of infinity and there are other arguments theists can use, with the OA being one of them and how this argument doesn’t use science at all but in his opinion was logically valid and sound. Now at this point the OA was long gone from my mind, but he mentioned it again, and I still needed one more argument, so I decided to do further research on it and force myself to understand the argument. So I found an excellent website that addresses the argument in good detail, and it took me about two-three days to fully understand it. And not only can I say I understand it, but I can’t believe what I have been missing out on. I think it is a fascinating argument after all and I love discussing it. So you are right, I don’t believe in God because of it, but I think it does a good job of supplementing the other arguments.

The Teleological Argument has found favour in recent years and is said by contemporary thinkers to be superior to the others. The Cosmological Argument was adopted by the Holy Roman Catholic Church as the official proof but has since been dropped. The Ontological Argument, in all its forms, has always been at the bottom of the heap, but for all its many faults remains my favourite for debating purposes.

Being a Christian Apologistis, I also have to examine and study the argument based on the Resurrection of Jesus, which is what I am currently working on.

I just had to vent lol.

It's helpful to see where people are coming from. So thank you for that.

 

[cottage]

I am saying God’s existence is a necessary truth because it is POSSIBLE for it to be a necessary truth. Nothing that exists within the universe is necessarily true, and since God is said to exist externally from the universe, his existence would have to be necessary.

‘God exists’ is NOT a necessary truth (please excuse the shouted capitals). Necessary truths are analyzed in terms of logical demonstration, and the concepts to which they refer do not become actualized objects due to the relation of terms in a proposition. And the propositions themselves, whether spoken or written, simply articulate what is thought and it is by that very same means that the conclusion in this case can be denied without encountering any absurdity. A necessary truth is universal and certain in as much that the proposition and its counterpart cannot be held in the mind at the same time. No person can conceive of 2 + 2 as being the equal of 3, or a two-sided triangle, or A not being A, all of which are universally and demonstrably true. If ‘God exists’ were a necessary truth it would be impossible to deny his existence as it would be to deny the foregoing, and yet every person including those of faith can conceive of God not existing. There is no being that cannot be thought not to exist. There is therefore no necessarily existent God.

And my point is based on the absurdity that would result in God NOT existing (infinite regression). The cause of space,time, matter is not something that could be contingent, but IS instead something which does not depend on anything outside itself for its existence and therefore exists NECESSARILY. So this is double trouble for the critic, because we have two reasons to believe that a MGB exists, the first is it is possible for it to exist and all possible necessary truths must exist…and the second is the fact that of the only two options available, the one is successfully negated so the other one wins by default, which happen to be the option of “necessity”.

To infer the existence of God from a phenomenon we understand as cause and effect, which is a feature of the known world, is to identify a specific empirical fact and then apply it as a general principle together with the conclusion that other worlds (God) must be as this one. But the phenomenon of causation is a feature of the physical world and it cannot be both necessary and contingent. This demonstrates the problem of inferring the existence of other worlds (to include gods) by expecting to apply phenomena from the actual world. But if the same causal phenomena are necessary for the omnipotent being’s work then the omnipotent being cannot work without them! And so the absurdity we arrive at is that the Being’s omnipotence and creative ability is causation dependent: it cannot be the former without the latter, and yet the latter (thedenial of which invites no contradiction) means that it cannot be the former! As for an infinite regress, whether or not such a thing is possible (Bertrand Russell said of the assertion that every series must have a first term: ‘This is false. The series of proper fractions has no first term.’), we know it isn’t logically necessary; for there is no demonstration that one thing is a cause of another and therefore since there can be no necessary first cause there can be no necessary infinite regression.
Leibniz said that even if the world has always existed there must be a sufficient reason to explain its contingent existence. (There is an explanation for everything, The Principle of Sufficient Reason, which says for every positive fact there is some reason, explanation or cause for why it is such and not otherwise.) And this sufficient reason he said will be God, an intelligent being that freely chose to bring the world into existence. But there is another way to look at that principle of sufficient reason. It may be argued that neither God nor the world existing from eternity need a reason for being, since there will be nothing external to them, and the contingency of the world isn’t explained by God since his non-existence can be conceived just as easily as any contingent thing, and if there is some unknowable and mysterious element that shrouds God’s elusive necessity from minds, then that that same argument may apply to the world itself, but if the world is created then there must be a reason and a purpose for its being brought into being. So what is it? According to the principle of sufficient reason nothing happens by chance and a thing that doesn’t have to exist but does exist needs a reason for its existence. But Leibniz (and William Lane Craig) takes that basic principle much further, which demands a different answer; for it is immediately evident that to say an intelligent being freely chose to bring the world into existence is to assign a purpose to the act of creation. And there can only be two answers to that question. God created the world for himself, or for the benefit of others. Both possibilities appear incoherent. For it seems obvious that an omnipotent Supreme Being, who is sufficient in all things, cannot have needs, unfulfilled wishes or desires. He has everything and is everything by definition. And nor can it be said that he created the world for the benefits of others, since it is nonsensical to imply that creatures that didn’t formerly exist can benefit from anything.

My point exactly!!! So why not look at the universe as a gift from the gods?

The key words here were ‘living in the third century’ when superstition was rife and the term magic meant something rather more sinister than the way it is used today. So I fail to understand the point of your analogy. Ignorance is surely not a virtue!

Who said God does not think and learn? If God wanted to play the guessing game with you and he said “I am THINKING of a number from 1-10, what number am I thinking of”. Is he not thinking?

A God who ‘thinks and learns’? In short, No! Clearly in the case of an omniscient and omnipotent being there is no learning from experience, no gaining of knowledge, no problem solving, no reflection or meditation, and no coping with adverse situations. And nor can there be a cognitive ability to reason, plan and form ideas, for by its very definition the concept of Supreme Being doesn’t reason: it is reason. So if this thinking and learning God responds in an anthropomorphic fashion then that contradicts the concept of all sufficient, necessary being.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

I am saying God’s existence is a necessary truth because it is POSSIBLE for it to be a necessary truth. Nothing that exists within the universe is necessarily true, and since God is said to exist externally from the universe, his existence would have to be necessary.

The problem is that this is not really an acceptable inference in modal logic (that if it is possible that P is necessary, then P, or then P is necessary). But if the inference is allowed, then it follows that it is possible that it is necessary that a slightly less than maximally great being exists, and we can infer that an infinite number of slightly less than maximally great beings exist necessarily- and thus the maximally great being cannot be responsible for their existence (since each slightly less than maximally great being exists necessarily in its own right), and thus the maximally great being is not maximally great.

Not a good result, either way.

And my point is based on the absurdity that would result in God NOT existing (infinite regression).

No absurdity.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

I am a big WLC fan.

He is the reason why Christian Apologetics is so prominent in my life right now, even though I was always a defender of the faith but he helped me take it to “another level”.

That's a double face-palm...

If you know WLC, you know he uses the kalam argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, and the argument based on the resurrection of Jesus.

All of which are unsound, and either question-begging or invalid.

WLC is a hack.