1robin
Christian/Baptist
I do not know what this was supposed to show.However there could of course be a lesser God, one who isn’t the Supreme Being, and in which case the above conclusion wouldn’t apply.
This is only going to get worse for you. So besides being vain in our conclusion we matter more than cows or goats, we enforce morality based on power. Also in a great many cases morality is no conducive to its adherent’s survival. I guess along with arbitrary survival now morality is defined as brain sophistication. If it was not one of the 300,000 white Christians who died to free a people from slavery would have done so. There exists no worse argument for atheism than morality. It is an issue that shipwrecks its premise.No, it isn’t a ‘goal’ but an observed fact. Humans are part of the world, and ‘humans flourishing’ is no more important than the cow or the tree. A cow feels pain and will avoid hazards to stay alive, and by staying alive it may reproduce, and the willow tree that is felled produces new shoots both from its stump and the felled trunk, and is thus rejuvenated and continues to grow and produce more seeds. There is no vanity in instinct and genetic material. Humans may be higher order animals but that term ‘morality’ is simply reducible to survival and continuity.
You keep making this argument and I keep trying to see the contradictions but I just can't. Being that I can't see what it is you are saying is probably why this is the only point you have made that still stands. I am afraid that understanding will undo it's status though. I see absolutely nothing contradictive with anything you said unless it is that cause and effect are what produces reality and that would not be how God would act. Is that what you are saying?But you are misunderstanding the principle itself and the logical consequent. Although an eternal or self-existent world are logically possible suppositions there is no contradiction in conceiving the possible non-existence of the world together with everything that occurs within it; and whatever the world is it cannot answer to a Supreme Being that is dependent upon the world and everything that occurs in the world, which includes the principle of causation. So there we have it: a contradiction twice over! There are no labels but just things that are true because they cannot logically be false.
1. The universe is a thing.I suspect you’ve rushed off a response seemingly without properly understanding what I have written. The argument has nothing to do with scientists’ claims. And this will be the third time I’ve explained that Hume’s empiricism is correct! For if we hold to the principle of causation, as we must with all things in experience, then an effect implies a cause. But, as Hume showed, cause isn’t logically necessary; or in the simplest terms it doesn’t exist beyond the natural world.
2. This thing began to exist.
3. It needs a cause or was the first thing ever encountered that didn't and there is no evidence for that.
Hume never said that causation ceased with the natural. That is not even possible for him to know even if true.
It is a simple fact that I my premise agrees with every observation ever made and your does not. I do not claim to know what happened as a fact but simply go with what is observable and "thinkable", the fact that nothing has no causal potentiality, that the statement that something began to exist from nothing is a logical contradiction given what we know, and on logical intuition and inference.
Since Hume's simple statement is wrenched into a unrecognizable form let me give another one from your side indicating the obvious:
The response of atheists to this dilemma has been silence.
Atheist philosopher, Quentin Smith writes,
"The idea that the Big Bang theory allows us to infer that the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago has attracted the attention of many theists. This theory seemed to confirm or at least lend support to the theological doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Indeed, the suggestion of a divine creation seemed so compelling that the notion that "God created the Big Bang" has taken a hold on popular consciousness and become a staple in the theistic component of 'educated common sense'. By contrast, the response of atheists and agnostics to this development has been comparatively lame."
http://www.risenjesus.com/ex-nihilo-nihil-fit-out-of-nothing-nothing-comes
The claim the universe had a cause is consistent with every other observable fact ever known. The claim that it does not is contradictory to it. There exists no reason to suspend a philosophical principle that has no dependence on nature. The number 1 is still 1 ever if not 1 anything existed.
Here we go again, so far so good.Every person, theist or skeptic, must agree that if God is the Supreme Being then he cannot fail to exist. That is the plain logical truth of the matter.
That is not coherent IMO.And that being the case then God cannot be the author of the world’s existence dependent upon a natural feature of the world that can fail to exist.
Is this the argument you have been making? I think I at least understand what you are saying finally.You can’t accept a self-evident logical truth on the one hand and then deny it on the other because it doesn’t favor your beliefs. And once again you cannot presume to argue from things that have no empirical exception to things that have no known instances, whether they are empirical or metaphysical.
1. If I posit that what is true always is then.
2. I can't argue for something that is not known to exist does in fact do so.
Only if for some reason once an argument is made on some basis that same basis must be used for all argumentation and that is invalid.
That is like saying if we watch some remote island's sea shore on a faraway planet with a telescope and no intelligent life ever comes into the picture. Then later we find "Hume was an idiot" written in the sand we conclude that nature did it and intelligence does not exist. The conditions for the premise are not identical. It is acceptable though not wise to assume no life exists until we encounter an effect for which only intelligence is a candidate. Only if we were dealing with proof claims would your argument be valid.