The apologia of the cosmos. Evidence of God

[KCfromNC]

I have no where in my discussions on how philosophy and science relate, equivocated on the word "philosophy".

Sure you have. You're confusing have a "life philosophy" with doing philosophy in the professional sense.

 

[rush1169]

1. Everything that begins to exist, has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist at some point in the distant past.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

Hey Elioenai -

I accept these as truth.

I have not made a case for anything beyond theism at this point. My intentions are to answer any questions about what I have presented so far, and then proceed from there.

While you can discuss endlessly in this thread the logic behind the premise, I'd love to see you start a new thread for those who accept the premise as fact and 'proceed from there'.

 

[Danyc]

That would be a ridiculous waste of time. For obvious reasons.

 

[Elioenai26]

Sure you have. You're confusing have a "life philosophy" with doing philosophy in the professional sense.

That would be a ridiculous waste of time. For obvious reasons.

In light of the recent posts made by the two of you, I respectfully ask your permission to discontinue discussion with you for the duration of our time on this website. I thank you for your understanding and time in considering this request. I wish the best for you and yours.

 

[Elioenai26]

Hey Elioenai -

I accept these as truth.



While you can discuss endlessly in this thread the logic behind the premise, I'd love to see you start a new thread for those who accept the premise as fact and 'proceed from there'.

Yes Rush, I do believe that I shall do that in the days to come. It shall be labeled something to the effect of: "Properties of the Causal Entity of the Cosmos".

Thank you for participating and encouraging me here.

 

[Gadarene]

In light of the recent posts made by the two of you, I respectfully ask your permission to discontinue discussion with you for the duration of our time on this website. I thank you for your understanding and time in considering this request. I wish the best for you and yours.

You really can't handle being disagreed with, can you?

 

[Gracchus]

In light of the recent posts made by the two of you, I respectfully ask your permission to discontinue discussion with you for the duration of our time on this website. I thank you for your understanding and time in considering this request. I wish the best for you and yours.

Going through my e-mail I saw the identical post at least four times, in different threads.

 

[Davian]

In order for the KCA to be refuted, you must supply an argument to prove that your position against it is so conclusive that there can be no other truth as to the matter; evidence so strong it overpowers contrary evidence (evidence for the KCA) . This is one usage of the word incontrovertible courtesy of Wikipedia.

In layman's terms, all I ask is that if you disagree with the argument, show how it's negation is more plausibly true than the argument. If the KCA is so riddled with problems, this should be easy for you and your other fellows to do.

I do not have to 'prove' anything, lol. All I need to do is show that one or more of your premises are faulty.

The burden of evidence is on *you* to show that you are right.

I find it interesting that the individuals making the truth claims cannot get their stories straight between themselves, and when pressed, try to shift the burden of evidence to others. If you have the truth, what is the problem?

Prove it.

I am glad you take the scientific approach. I do as well. I do claim the proposition: "If God exists, we can know He exists", as true and have provided one argument for the existence of God.

No, that is not science.

Try to state that in the form of a falsifiable hypothesis.

This question is vague for several reasons:

1. The KCA is an argument comprised of two premises with a conclusion. Now your question is how can the argument apply before and at the instantiation of the cosmos? This is quite unintelligible and misconstrues the nature of a syllogistic argument. All the argument tells us is that the universe has a Cause. That is all it tells us Davian. And no scientists will seriously maintain otherwise without facing ridicule from his own fellow scientists.

Citation needed here.

Thus, the argument cannot apply anything before and at the instantiation of the cosmos, it has no causal powers, for it is just an argument!

If you could just rephrase the question more clearly, I shall be able to answer it for you.

No, it points the problem in your argument. You cannot show that premise 1 applies specifically to the instantiation of the cosmos, can you?

Courtesy of my post #477 which I wrote in response to the same question you have asked yet again.

......

It seems to me that you are confusing question begging with a deductive modus ponens syllogism. This syllogism is a logical basic form of a deductive argument that when written looks like the following:

Another example would be the following:

1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates is a man
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal

It is:

p implies q...
p
Therefore...q

Davian this is very basic philosophy we are dealing with here and any objection to it is a pseudo-intellectual objection based on a lack of understanding of even the most basic syllogistic models.

You see, all you have done in your objection is describe what a deductive argument is! A deductive argument is one in which the conclusion is implicit in the premises waiting to be derived by the logical rules of inference.

Now, an example of question begging would be me positing the following argument:

1. Either God exists, or the moon is made of bleu cheese
2. The moon is not made of bleu cheese
3. Therefore God exists

You see in the above that the argument's conclusion follows logically from the premises, but we know this is not a good argument because the arguer is begging the question of God's existence by positing (1) without any independent corroborating evidence. Therefore the argument fails.

The proponent of the KCA gives multiple attestation and evidence corroborating the veracity of it's two premises and these evidences and supports are completely independent of one's beliefs!

If that is so, why is it then that only theists, in an apparent attempt to rationalize their beliefs to others, seem to bring up this argument?

It seems here that you are equating adjectives such as immaterial, non-spatial, timeless, etc. etc. to mean that they necessarily and are only applicable to something "non-existant". This is clearly fallacious for several reasons:

1. The argument concludes to a Cause of the universe which in itself is a positive existential affirmation! There is a Cause of the universe.

2. To say that the universe was caused by a non-existant entity or "no-thing" is to say that the universe has "no cause" which is the exact opposite of what the argument argues for!

3. The argument's conclusion also implies the attribution of incredible causal power to the Causal entity of the universe which brought the universe into being without any material cause! These all are positive attributes! It is wholly different from "non-existance" or "nothing" which has no reality, no properties and no causal powers.

4. The attribution of negative predicates is enormously informative and mataphyscially significant. From it's timelessness and immateriality, we can deduce from these it's personhood, which is a positive property which is of great significance and theological importance and wholly unlike "no-thing."

Just the sort of thing that give philosophy a bad rap. The use of negative predicates appears to be required in the absence of positive ones.

Outside of the universe (all material, all space, and all time) means transcendant over the universe i.e immaterial, non-spatial, and timeless.

Word salad.

The argument never argues that the Cause has gotten inside of the universe, so if you raise this as an objection, it is a strawman fallacy. If raised as a question from curiosity, it is in no way logically incoherent to say that God can act within the universe by however means He sees fit since He was able to create it in the first place. Maintaining that He could not is like maintaining that a carpenter could not enter into a house after having built it.

The big book of fallacies again. Put it down and answer the question, which was prompted by *you*. I know what a 'carpenter' and a 'house' is. You still have not provided a definition of a deity, yours in particular.

If the instantiation of the cosmos required a cause, how can you demonstrate that it is even still in existence? A feeling in your head?

Does not WLC have something other than unsupported assertions that you can paste here?

There is no commmonly accepted credible evidence from science or philosophy that the universe is infinite.

So why then does this 'creator' need to be infinite? Was it just for marketing?

These are questions and not really objections and therefore I will simply say that they are not pertinent to the KCA.

Again, these questions were prompted by *you*.

You said, "Unimaginably powerful, to create the entire universe out of nothing".
- detail scientifically how much power was required for initiating the instantiation of the cosmos
- what is the apparent total of energy in the universe? What if it is zero?
- or is "Unimaginably powerful" just marketing hype?

Once again, these are not really objections but curious questions which do not have any bearing on the first two premises. Therefore they are not relevant in the inference to the conclusion.

You are the one making the claims. Suck it up.

Such a transcnedant cause must be personal for two reasons:

1. The only entities we know of that can be timeless and immaterial are either minds or abstract objects like numbers.

2. Abstract objects like numbers do not stand in causal relations. For example, the number 7 cannot "create" or "choose" to create anything!

3. The transcendant Cause therefore must be an unembodied mind.

4. Only a free agent can account for the origin of a temporal effect from a timeless cause. If the cause of the universe were an impersonal mechanically operating entity, then the cause could never exist without it's effect. For if the sufficient condition of the effect is given, then the effect must be given as well. The only way for the Cause to be timeless but for its effect to begin in time is for the Cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time without an antecedent determining conditions.

"unembodied mind"? What do you mean by that? The 'mind' that science is aware of is a process, an emergent property of a brain. It is not immaterial. No brain, no mind.

Without some demonstration or evidence of some sort for this "unembodied mind" you are up the creek without a metaphysical paddle.

Now, I guess you will assert that 'you must have an unembodied mind or the argument doesn't work' or the like.

That is your problem to solve. The KCA gets benched until then.

I'm Batman - YouTube

And I think this may have answered the first question you asked earlier.

<snip youtube>

No, it doesn't. Getting lazy?

This is more or less another question from curiosity and has no bearing on the KCA.

It was *your* claim.

Provide details on what choices were available to this supposed deity in the process of creating the cosmos. Were there many, few, or no choices. How much intelligence was needed?

I can see that you do not want to go there.

Since the Bible is not one book but many books, letters, and other forms of literature compiled together, one cannot say that all of it is "literal" in any true sense of the word.

Many passages in the bible are to be taken allegorically and or symbolically and not literally. So you will have to furnish the passages which you have questions about.

I did read it right when I thought you said that you would be evading. I won't bother asking a third time.

If you would like to highlight anything from the above link and have me address it, then I will be glad to if I have not already addressed it.

Intellectual laziness. No matter, I will draw on it later.

 

[KCfromNC]

In light of the recent posts made by the two of you, I respectfully ask your permission to discontinue discussion with you for the duration of our time on this website.

Nothing stopping you from continuing to fail to answer my posts. You didn't need my permission up to now to do so. I have no idea what this passive-aggressive display of yours is supposed to prove now.

 

[Elioenai26]

I do not have to 'prove' anything, lol. All I need to do is show that one or more of your premises are faulty.

The burden of evidence is on *you* to show that you are right.

I find it interesting that the individuals making the truth claims cannot get their stories straight between themselves, and when pressed, try to shift the burden of evidence to others. If you have the truth, what is the problem?

Prove it.

No, that is not science.

Try to state that in the form of a falsifiable hypothesis.

Citation needed here.

No, it points the problem in your argument. You cannot show that premise 1 applies specifically to the instantiation of the cosmos, can you?

If that is so, why is it then that only theists, in an apparent attempt to rationalize their beliefs to others, seem to bring up this argument?


Just the sort of thing that give philosophy a bad rap. The use of negative predicates appears to be required in the absence of positive ones.


Word salad.

The big book of fallacies again. Put it down and answer the question, which was prompted by *you*. I know what a 'carpenter' and a 'house' is. You still have not provided a definition of a deity, yours in particular.

If the instantiation of the cosmos required a cause, how can you demonstrate that it is even still in existence? A feeling in your head?

Does not WLC have something other than unsupported assertions that you can paste here?

So why then does this 'creator' need to be infinite? Was it just for marketing?

Again, these questions were prompted by *you*.

You said, "Unimaginably powerful, to create the entire universe out of nothing".
- detail scientifically how much power was required for initiating the instantiation of the cosmos
- what is the apparent total of energy in the universe? What if it is zero?
- or is "Unimaginably powerful" just marketing hype?

You are the one making the claims. Suck it up.

"unembodied mind"? What do you mean by that? The 'mind' that science is aware of is a process, an emergent property of a brain. It is not immaterial. No brain, no mind.

Without some demonstration or evidence of some sort for this "unembodied mind" you are up the creek without a metaphysical paddle.

Now, I guess you will assert that 'you must have an unembodied mind or the argument doesn't work' or the like.

That is your problem to solve. The KCA gets benched until then.

I'm Batman - YouTube

No, it doesn't. Getting lazy?

It was *your* claim.

Provide details on what choices were available to this supposed deity in the process of creating the cosmos. Were there many, few, or no choices. How much intelligence was needed?

I can see that you do not want to go there.

I did read it right when I thought you said that you would be evading. I won't bother asking a third time.

Intellectual laziness. No matter, I will draw on it later.

Until you renounce your theological noncognitivist self-defeating view, I see no reason to facilitate in your discussing something that is meaningless and non-sensical to you. This means any discussion related to God cannot be undertaken by you and I because the word God has no meaning to you.

Thank you.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Truth is not relative but absolute. All truth claims are absolute, narrow, and exclusive. All truths exclude their opposites, even religious truths. Seven points to remember about truth are given below:

• Truth is discovered, not invented. i.e. gravity was discovered, not invented by Newton. It exists independent of anyone's knowledge of it.
• Truth is transcultural i.e. if something is true it is true for all people at all places and at all times i.e. 2+2=4 is true in America today, as it was in Pakistan 200 years ago.
• Truth is unchanging i.e. even though our beliefs about the truth may change, truth itself does not i.e. when men believed the earth was flat. Truthfully it was round. When we discovered it was round our belief about this truth changed, not the truth itself.
• Beliefs cannot change a fact i.e. some may have sincerely believed the earth was flat. This did not make it actually flat.
• Truth is not affected by the attitude of one professing it i.e. an arrogant person does not make the truth he speaks false, nor does a humble person make the error he speaks true.
• All truths are absolute i.e. something is either true or false, it cannot be a little true or a little false.
• Contrary beliefs are possible, contrary truths are not. (Geisler and Turek, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Crossway, 2004)

In going over your OP, I have a few objections to your list. In essence, it stems from an oversimplistic and early-western idea of postulates and truth. To wit:

1. Truth is discovered, not invented. i.e. gravity was discovered, not invented by Newton. It exists independent of anyone's knowledge of it.
   Technically true, but in practice truth can't be discovered, only blindly felt towards. Only logic and mathematics allow truth to be known, and even then some groups dispute that.
2. Truth is transcultural i.e. if something is true it is true for all people at all places and at all times i.e. 2+2=4 is true in America today, as it was in Pakistan 200 years ago.
   This is an overly-simplistic view of how claims work. Only claims without conditions are transcultural. "1 + 1 = 2" is true regardless of anything else because it only depends on definitions. "My car is red" isn't transculturally true because it depends on, among other things, who the speaker is: it's true for Bob, but not for Alice.
3. Truth is unchanging i.e. even though our beliefs about the truth may change, truth itself does not i.e. when men believed the earth was flat. Truthfully it was round. When we discovered it was round our belief about this truth changed, not the truth itself.
   Ah, but think of another claim about the Earth: it's age. Today we can claim that it's 4.5 billion years old (give or take). This is a true statement, but it wasn't always true, and it won't always be true.
4. Beliefs cannot change a fact i.e. some may have sincerely believed the earth was flat. This did not make it actually flat.
   Beliefs can change facts, if the fact in question relates to beliefs: "I believe in evolution" is a fact. However, this is a minor point.
5. Truth is not affected by the attitude of one professing it i.e. an arrogant person does not make the truth he speaks false, nor does a humble person make the error he speaks true.
   True enough, hence why argumenta ad hominem are fallacious.
6. All truths are absolute i.e. something is either true or false, it cannot be a little true or a little false.
   This is a matter of preference - not everyone grades truth using boolean logic. Take the curvature of the Earth. When we thought it was flat, that's like saying its curvature was zero. When we thought the Earth was a perfect sphere, we postulated a curvature of 8 inches to the mile. When we realised it was an oblate spheroid, its curvature is now 7.9-8.1. Now, thinking the Earth is flat and thinking the Earth is spherical are both incorrect beliefs - but one is clearly more wrong than the other, as is quantifiable by curvature.
7. Contrary beliefs are possible, contrary truths are not.
   Agreed, albeit under the same conditions; "I have a car" and "I don't have a car" can both be true for different conditions (e.g., before and after the purchase of a car).

 

[Davian]

Until you renounce your theological noncognitivist self-defeating view, I see no reason to facilitate in your discussing something that is meaningless and non-sensical to you. This means any discussion related to God cannot be undertaken by you and I because the word God has no meaning to you.

Thank you.

I consider that to be intellectually dishonest. My "view" has not changed since your offer to debate me on this topic, here.

I see this simply as an evasion tactic. My theological position is irrelevant to the problems that you have with your arguments.

Your lack of response will be seen as abdication.

 

[rush1169]

Truth is discovered, not invented
Wiccan says FALSE.
Truth is transcultural
Wiccan says FALSE.
Truth is unchanging
Wiccan says FALSE.
Beliefs cannot change a fact
Wiccan says FALSE.
Truth is not affected by the attitude of one professing it
Wiccan says TRUE.
All truths are absolute
Wiccan says FALSE.
Contrary beliefs are possible, contrary truths are not.
Wiccan says TRUE.

A headscratcher for me.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Truth is discovered, not invented

Wiccan says FALSE.

No, he said that this was true in a sense. That is, the truth is out there. However, our knowledge of it is faulty. Thus, truth is never completely assertained.

Head-scratcher? No. Pretty straighforward.

Truth is transcultural

Wiccan says FALSE.

What I call blood-red, you may call maroon. We may agree that we are seeing on shades of red. But it is neither true nor false that it is maroon.

A different example: The Maasai may consider that one cannot be called tall unless one is at least 6'6'', around two meters. In the US, 5'10'' is average (IIRC). Tall might be 6'2''. Thus, it is not "true" that Bob is tall...or short.

Truth is unchanging

Wiccan says FALSE.

Again, his comments are straightforward. If today is my birthday, it is true that I am X years * 365 + (number of leap years) days old. Tomorrow, I am 1 day older. Thus, the truth of my age changed.

Beliefs cannot change a fact

Wiccan says FALSE.

Did you not read what he wrote? He said if there is a claim about beliefs, then changing my beliefs changes the veracity of the claim. Simple.

Truth is not affected by the attitude of one professing it

Wiccan says TRUE.

I'll assume since he agreed with your fellow Christian you don't find this one puzzling.

All truths are absolute

Wiccan says FALSE.

Do you really not understand that there are degrees of correctness? That one position can be more correct than another, and another still more correct?

In this example, that the earth is flat is not very correct though this geometry is sufficient for building a modest house. That the earth is a sphere is more correct than that the earth is flat. Calling the earth an oblate spheroid is still more correct and at sea level we can estimate the degree of that oblateness. Nevertheless, it is still incorrect when you add in all the features of the landscape.

Contrary beliefs are possible, contrary truths are not.

Wiccan says TRUE.

Here, he is agreeing with your fellow Christian.

A headscratcher for me.

You'll have to explain why. It seemed obvious to me what he was saying (here's hoping he doesn't come back to tell me I had it all wrong!), though I might quibble with his semantics.

 

[Elioenai26]

I consider that to be intellectually dishonest. My "view" has not changed since your offer to debate me on this topic, here.

I see this simply as an evasion tactic. My theological position is irrelevant to the problems that you have with your arguments.

Your lack of response will be seen as abdication.

That is fine. Since you did not accept my invitation to formal debate, I am free with regards to any demands you may make. I offered, you declined.

And as I stated before, talking about God is not possible from where you stand.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

A headscratcher for me.

I'm perplexed by your response.

Are you saying that you simply don't understand what I, or Elioenai26, wrote?

Since you simplified my post down to its bare essentials, is your response a sarcastic comment on my post's unnecessary long-windedness? Are you saying that it's not really a head-scratcher at all, and me and/or Elioenai26 are being unnecessarily verbose (a sin I'm committing once more, I feel)?

Is "Wiccan says FALSE" supposed to mean that you disagree with me on that particular point, or that I disagree with Elioenai26? It would seem that the "Wiccan says FALSE"'s are simplifications of my points of view, but they don't correlate - the first point, for instance, says "Wiccan says FALSE" when, in fact, I say true. So I'm perplexed.

A headscratcher for me, too, it seems.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

You'll have to explain why. It seemed obvious to me what he was saying (here's hoping he doesn't come back to tell me I had it all wrong!), though I might quibble with his semantics.

Quibble away! You seem to understand (and agree?) with what I said. I'm not sure what rush1169 is saying, though - is he simplifying my post? Is he criticising it? Is he saying I'm wrong?

 

[Tinker Grey]

Quibble away! You seem to understand (and agree?) with what I said. I'm not sure what rush1169 is saying, though - is he simplifying my post? Is he criticising it? Is he saying I'm wrong?

I agree with you given your terms, I think. I think I prefer different terminology at points. If you like, I can detail this later. (It might be fun, but I don't know that it is that important.)

I have no idea what he is saying. I would guess, for example, on the first point where he says "Wiccan says FALSE" is that he simply didn't read it. Or, he is mocking a strawman.

 

[rush1169]

Since you simplified my post down to its bare essentials, is your response a sarcastic comment on my post's unnecessary long-windedness?

Sorry - maybe I got too simplified

Eli was defining 'truth' using 7 characteristics of what 'truth' is. The definition of truth isn't up for debate. It defies logic to claim that any one of those characteristics is false, much less 5 out of 7. When you provided an example to falsify a characterisitc of 'truth', that example implied that you think that characteristic was false. So, I simplified for brevity and clarity. Your examples were actually examples of what truth is not and Eli's post isn't concerned with what is not truth.

For example: "Belief cannot change a fact" and you said yes it can. Your example was "I believe in evolution". The point is "I believe in evolution" is a belief that can be changed, ergo it doen't fall under the definition of truth.

"Truth is transcultural" and you say no it's not. Your gave an example of a non-transcultural statement, ergo it doesn't fall under the definition of truth.

The point is, if one is making a statement of 'truth' it has to have all those characteristics to meet the definition of 'truth'. Your examples were not examples of truth because they didn't adhere to the definition. So, to say any one of the characteristics of what defines 'truth' is false doesn't make any sense.

 

[Belk]

Sorry - maybe I got too simplified

Eli was defining 'truth' using 7 characteristics of what 'truth' is. The definition of truth isn't up for debate. It defies logic to claim that any one of those characteristics is false, much less 5 out of 7. When you provided an example to falsify a characterisitc of 'truth', that example implied that you think that characteristic was false. So, I simplified for brevity and clarity. Your examples were actually examples of what truth is not and Eli's post isn't concerned with what is not truth.

For example: "Belief cannot change a fact" and you said yes it can. Your example was "I believe in evolution". The point is "I believe in evolution" is a belief that can be changed, ergo it doen't fall under the definition of truth.

"Truth is transcultural" and you say no it's not. Your gave an example of a non-transcultural statement, ergo it doesn't fall under the definition of truth.

The point is, if one is making a statement of 'truth' it has to have all those characteristics to meet the definition of 'truth'. Your examples were not examples of truth because they didn't adhere to the definition. So, to say any one of the characteristics of what defines 'truth' is false doesn't make any sense.

Quite obviously it is since that is what was being debated.