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Many non Christians have died for their religious beliefs.Has anyone ever gave their life to preserve mother goose?
"Nothing" --hyperbole, perhaps. I meant, obviously, next to nothing by comparison to what all there is to know.Logic suggests that if you know nothing about such things, claims and speculations about such things are entirely moot.
As Wittgenstein said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
That's not the question. (It's a God of the gaps theory, regardless). You haven't shown how the assuming of the passage of time as necessary for Cause-and-effect makes any difference in the end.
Simply the logical necessity that all other causes and effects, including their subsequent effects, corollaries, and interactions proceed from first cause, and cannot confine it.↑
mark: "You insist on passage of time for cause-and-effect. I think God is a long ways past that."
Why? What method of validating what God is or isn't subject to do you have?
mark: "Existence begs explanation."
What if there is no explanation? What then?
Minds far superior to mine have considered the question of Origin. They have devoted extensive time, discussion, investigation, debate, etc to setting questions and seeking answers. I have considered many of those answers and seen to them to be contradictory and inconclusive. Consequently I do not know (and do not see any grounds for thinking anyone yet knows) what origin lies beyond the "oldest detectable event", the Big Bang. Until new evidence arises, or a superior interpretation of existing evidence is presented, there is no point in a limited intellect such as mine considering the matter further.I don't mean to insult you, but it sounds like you are saying, not only that because of your ignorance you are unable to consider it, or at least that you see no point in considering it, but that your ignorance invalidates the premise.
You may believe that. I find your grounds for so believing to be whimsical and lightweight.Meanwhile, the fact that the tenets of the "theory" of First Cause With Intent do fit, makes it rather compelling, at least to me. I remind you that many a scientific pursuit is undertaken on less grounds.
Please. Your attitude here is becoming tedious.I will easily admit that I am biased in my assessments, even in my logic, by my love of my own thoughts. I wish more people would admit to that. I do try to avoid that, but I am not well trained in debate. I just see what seems to me to make sense or not to make sense. With you I see your constant need for "I don't know", as perhaps an avoidance of bias at best. Yet it shows your bias, I think.
I'm not the one claiming to know how it started.
You've completely lost me here. Huh?Yes I did. It was at the very beginning of our conversation. Time didn't exist in the singularity. Cause and effect requires the passage of time.
If you want to argue that god magically poofed things into existence, that's fine. Just understand that it is a violation of cause and effect, not the coherent inception of it as you describe.
I'm simply using the accepted semantics of the term; cause and effect involves temporal precedence and succession - the cause precedes the effect and the effect follows and results from the cause. There may be some Humean debate about the philosophical meaning of causality, but its temporality is unquestioned.I see we are getting nowhere. You insist on passage of time for cause-and-effect. I think God is a long ways past that.
Beginning and end are temporal terms. We have concepts like cause and effect because we are bound by time and view events from a temporal perspective.I can, perhaps, allow that for us to discuss cause-and-effect logically, we can only speak in terms of time passage, we being humans bound by time passage. "He has put eternity into the hearts of men, yet they cannot discern what he has done from the beginning to the end."
It appears you didn't understand it.I read your little dissertation here referencing descriptions of quantum physics on origins --yet you don't even see you irrevocably must defer to cause-and-effect. This came from that. That made this happen.
Does God exist?Existence begs explanation.
The Cheshire Cat is another fiction.Perhaps the Cheshire Cat appears and disappears without explanation. That doesn't mean it is not caused.
And many atheists have died for not having religious beliefs...Many non Christians have died for their religious beliefs.
An 'explanation' that raises more questions than it purports to answer, especially if those questions are unanswerable, explains nothing.
It depends what you mean by the 'so-called metaphysical'. I'm reasonably familiar with metaphysics.Is your attitude toward the so-called metaphysical that since you know nothing about it, you haven't any opinion concerning it?
Quite; different cultures have different origin stories. I was rather taken by the Epicurian origin story (as told by Lucretius). They had a very logical, almost scientific view of an atomist universe (justified by casual observation rather than experiment), surprisingly close to the modern classical view.This is why I feel the appeal of invoking God as a first cause is more about theological validation than anything else.
I guess it depends on who's looking. Science doesn't see beginnings. It only sees that point beyond which it is unable to see.I agree that the terminology begins to fall apart, beginning with time sequence. As far as I can go back though, though delicately held, Logical sequence need not be time-dependent but cause-dependent. God need not operate like we do, to be logical.
I don't find perpetual cause to be any more reasonable than infinite regression, itself (if not possessing of intent and intelligence) being mere mechanical fact. If it is possessing of intent and intelligence, then it is God, except for one small problem --so far we see beginnings in cosmology, not perpetual cause.
If, though, by perpetual cause you only mean that God keeps on causing, to me it is reasonable to say that sans time, it makes no difference to God whether he spoke it into existence or is continually causing it.
I give you credit for being able to argue more cogently (much more cogently) than I. The old dead guys were amazing, who could make a cogent sentence 300 words long, without a word processor, and without losing the interest of the reader --I wish I could do that, but I get going on a thought and get distracted and end up with a jagged line of thought. Probably more than any other I've read on the forums I frequent, I am accused of proffering a "word salad". I'm sorry I don't do better, and it's distressing that it isn't getting better as I get older.I'm simply using the accepted semantics of the term; cause and effect involves temporal precedence and succession - the cause precedes the effect and the effect follows and results from the cause. There may be some Humean debate about the philosophical meaning of causality, but its temporality is unquestioned.
You don't get to make up your own definition of cause and effect to suit your argument.
When you presuppose a creator God with supernatural power and effect, you're begging the question; confirmation bias then ensures that not only can 'god-did-it' be the answer to any and all unanswered questions, but that is taken as support for its existence - a vicious circle. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail...
Beginning and end are temporal terms. We have concepts like cause and effect because we are bound by time and view events from a temporal perspective.
However, you can take an atemporal perspective of the universe and its worldlines as a 4D Parminidean 'block' where past and future are equally real (Special Relativity suggests this and has empirical support), but from such a perspective, concepts involving temporal sequence such as cause and effect are inapplicable; you can't have it both ways.
It appears you didn't understand it.
Does God exist?
The Cheshire Cat is another fiction.
I'm quite happy to extend causality to the origin of the observable universe (although, as already mentioned, that requirement is debatable), and I've already mentioned some causal explanations that are consistent with what we know of the physics of this universe.
But the argument you propose (for a creator God) involves the fallacy of special pleading; it comes across as a contrived catch-all 'explanation', a label with no explanatory power, about which people can literally give chapter and verse when it suits them, yet also claim it's mysterious and unknowable.
To me, a good explanation gives a greater understanding of the phenomenon it is supposed to explain, an understanding which can potentially be used to make and test predictions about that phenomenon, tie the phenomenon into our existing body of knowledge through common fundamentals, and help unify our understanding of other phenomena. Preferably, it should also be parsimonious (Occam's Razor), and if it coheres with (doesn't contradict) what we already know, so much the better.
An 'explanation' that raises more questions than it purports to answer, especially if those questions are unanswerable, explains nothing.
If you disagree with those general criteria for a good explanation, please explain why; if you agree with them, let me ask you a question I've asked of others who say God is a good explanation - how does it satisfy those criteria better than the non-explanation, "It's magic!"?
Thanks for admitting that. Creation was nothing like that.The fundamental assumption that underpins science is the idea of an objective universe.
No. You can use circular reasoning by first assuming that all things conform to fishbowl standards.Then you can interpret all you see accordingly. Be my guest, you are welcome to your beliefs.In that framework, we certainly can derive and test models of the universe's past.
I reject the idea of people pretending to know when they certainly do not. If time did not exist, for example, in the far universe, you would have no way to know.However since you appear to reject the idea of an object universe, then all bets are off.
Though in past discussions (no pun intended), you do not appear to have an epistemological basis.
I was addressing your vague comments. Remember? 'scientific explanations are always open to revision or falsification'Meh; perhaps if you could muster a decent argument you wouldn't have to rely on such absurd misrepresentations and exaggerations.
.. and neither does science require such a superfluous 'assumption' (ie: 'an objective universe'). In fact asserting that it does, is a complete mischaracterization of science as a belief system, especially when such assumptions require that they also be 'true'.dad said:Thanks for admitting that. Creation was nothing like that.pitabread said:The fundamental assumption that underpins science is the idea of an objective universe.
This must be a record .. putting aside his well-known nonsensical meaning of the term 'fishbowl', I agree with dad on this .. (but only on the point he is making in his above response).dad said:No. You can use circular reasoning by first assuming that all things conform to fishbowl standards.Then you can interpret all you see accordingly. Be my guest, you are welcome to your beliefs.pitabread said:In that framework, we certainly can derive and test models of the universe's past.
And many bothans died to bring us this information.And many atheists have died for not having religious beliefs...
You're very welcome.I want to thank you, perhaps more than any other I have talked to here the last few day, for your patience, effort and time invested, thoughtfulness and kindness in discussing these things with me.
Unless you specify the relevant quantum physics phenomenon and the proposed explanation, I can't really comment specifically; but you may have misinterpreted the point, which refers to the explanation alone, rather than the phenomena or entities invoked in explaining (though an understanding of the phenomena and entities involved can obviously help).You say, "An 'explanation' that raises more questions than it purports to answer, especially if those questions are unanswerable, explains nothing." --I'm not sure that's true. Certainly Quantum Physics as we know it raises more questions than it answers, (that is, unless you want to combine them all into the catchall, "HOW?"), since we hardly know where to begin asking the questions or what words to put to them.
I've mentioned possible histories of our universe, consistent with known physics - temporally infinite histories, mirror time histories, and finite-but-unbounded-in-time histories. They're currently untestable, but they're possible explanations.I don't know if I lack the intelligence to see what you have shown, but I have not seen you posit any other possible explanations for existence --only to mention other avenues of study that exist. Of course, my saying that doesn't render them invalid.
A 'first cause', per se, is just an initial event; so, unless the capitalisation confers some additional meaning, it also has no intent and no direction - assuming it's necessary at all."To avoid using the the term "God", as I said I would do, I will say First Cause, but the explanation, "It's magic!" doesn't do the job because magic requires no intent, no direction, and possibly implies the rule of chance, which is illogical nonsense. To me also, it seems to only send one down the road of infinite regression --another logical fail.
'Virtual particles' are just an analogy for below threshold quantum field excitations.The Cheshire cat reference was only an attempt at humor, derived from your handle and from the claim of some that quantum particles are observed causelessly blinking in and out of existence.
Special pleading is a fallacy, so an argument that uses it is, by definition, mistaken (whether the point at issue is true or false). If you're happy to knowingly hold with an irrational/illogical argument, that's your prerogative, but if so, rational argument and critical thinking are no longer relevant, so I'll stop.I hope I am not fooling myself to say that the special pleading for First Cause With Intent, is only after a long look at all the other alternatives semi-cogently presented to me so far. Perhaps it is special pleading, but if it is, I find it still more compelling than many other beloved premises of current scientific pursuits. But perhaps that is my bias. I do have a habit of appreciating my own thoughts more than they merit.
Inevitably, unless reality has infinite levels of scale, there will be unexplained fundamental 'stuff', out of which everything else is made, and which it makes no sense to ask of what it's made. The same applies to existence in general - ultimately, it's a brute fact.When a person sees a gap, as we all do (I think) concerning absolute beginnings, we consider different probable explanations --gap fillers ... Yet we still don't know what Gravity is, nor what the smallest observable particle is composed of at its most basic level.
I don't know what you mean by this - we know the layout of the periodic table is a compromise, but in what sense is it 'wrong'?We only end up with Structure, it seems to me, not Filler. But structure is good, don't get me wrong. Yet I can't help but think that at some point we will see what was wrong with the periodic table --not just in depth of knowledge, but a presumption we did not realize right up to present day. And yes, that may be a flight of fancy of mine. But then, after all, Quantum physics has turned more than one presumption on its head.
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