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Well then go ahead and prove that God did it is the true and comprehensive explanation for the beginning of the universe and not just a credulous assumption. Show us that you really do know how the universe began. If you want to claim your God did it then prove beyond reasonable doubt that your God is real and created the universe. And, no, those five arguments dont do that. They only do what I stated earlier. They label something unknown as God for no sound reason. As SithDoughnut has already shown, they are riddled with errors, fallacies and misapprehensions.
You posted a series of five faulty arguments that claimed that your God is real and that it created the universe and life. I said that the causes of the universe and life are unknown so those claims are really just providing God did it as a comforting answer to those questions.Why would I argue an unreasonable reduction of a premise?
That assumes that the Big Bang is not part of an infinite chain. I'm not saying it's true, or even likely, but if you're going to make absolute proofs then you need absolute evidence.
Firstly, why is your definition true?
Secondly, why is God the only possible cause? Is it because all the other causes are impossible (for example a wizard who exists outside of time and space, but is not omnipotent or infinite, or something literally coming from nothing), or because you are defining God as the first cause?
Not in a logical argument. Or, at least, there's no need for it.
And that eliminates the Big Bang as a potential first cause how? Given that the laws of physics (and the resultant cause and effect) came into being after the Big Bang, why assume that it is part of a chain that began after it?
Because perfection is an individual opinion, like the concept of a favourite.
So his argument is actually "there is a balance, therefore God exists"?
Can you give an example of something that has always been good (even survival is not desired by those who commit suicide), or an unalienable right that has always existed? I can't think of one.
Evolution is aimless, but it does follow a logical path. There is no need for a designer, but it's not chance either. There is a middle ground that Aquinas did not deal with, which is understandable because the option wasn't available to him at the time. However, it's here now, and it needs to be included.
Possibly, but the arguments leave huge gaps where there should be further logical steps, generally regarding the whole "first cause = God" argument. If God is really the only possibility, the argument should demonstrate this. It should not be assumed that the reader will just go with it.
What are these qualities and how do you know God has them?
I'm completely in agreement with you here, which is why Aquinas' arguments should at least be somewhat updated to keep up with the world as we understand it.
Thanks, I've found some promising sites as well, so I'll have a look.
You posted a series of five faulty arguments that claimed that your God is real and that it created the universe and life. I said that the causes of the universe and life are unknown so those claims are really just providing God did it as a comforting answer to those questions.
Now, are the answers to those questions known or not? If they arent known, which is actually the case, then my saying that those arguments were providing God did it as a shallow, comforting answer to unknown questions was, in fact, a reasonable reduction. If you think the answers to those questions are known then tell us what those answers are and prove to us beyond reasonable doubt that they are true.
I dont find that a comforting answer. In fact, the argument that the universe doesnt need God to exist doesnt seem like an answer to anything. How about you? Do you find it comforting?Or is the "comforting answer" the argument that the universe doesn't need God to exist?
There is nothing shallow about the quest to understand the beginning of the universe and life. However, there is no need to assume God did it to search for the mechanism by which the universe and life began. The assumption is of no aid to the search and could easily be a hindrance if you are basing your reasoning on a false assumption, which is more than likely. Assuming God did it and leaving it at that is definitely a shallow answer.If God is in fact the cause of life and all existence, this would not be a substitute for the quest to understand the mechanisms by which God did create the universe. So, I don't understand what's shallow about seeking to understand existence and the cause thereof to be expressed philosophically.
Most, if not all things we observe, have a defined beginning and end. Now while this doesn't prove some impossibility of an infinite event in the universe, it's reasonable to assume all things in the universe have a beginning and an end and do not result from an infinite chain.
God is the only reasonable solution that fully satisfies the conditions of a first cause. A being who exists outside of time and space is either omnipotent over time and space, or incapable of being an initial cause;
I would think it illogical to exclude a higher resolution of elusive and abstract concepts.
Oh, right. Singularity... So, the Big Bang satisfies more conditions than I thought. However, it was finite and therefor must have been governed in some way within space and time. The Big Bang is the first event within time we know of, (right?) but this wouldn't make it the cause of time, would it?
People certainly express their opinion with perfection, but that doesn't make perfection individual opinion. We already have the concepts of favorite, best, most and so on. Perfection is a concept of something beyond these things. It's inconsequential to the concept that mom opens her gift and says "oh, it's perfect" because, though in that moment she meant it, that gift could in no way be flawless. It will break or otherwise fall into entropy. Perfection is completeness.
Balance would be closer to zero. What we have is a universe of positive growth and successful improvement. Balance would be equally failure and success.
Life has always been a good thing. It's not that the suicidal do not desire life and survival, it's that they find life is not as good as it should be, and give up. Although, mostly, they want to continue living so long as someone notices and helps. Even if some suicidal individuals somehow disagreed that life is a good thing, a significant portion of the rest of us would want to help them realize that life is a good thing and keep them from killing themselves.
Liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness have existed as long as intelligent beings have. It's not the rights that have always existed, but the concepts those rights secure and define.
How can something be aimless but not chance? Evolution must be directed or random. A middle option would suggest it is both yet somehow neither. This works for shades of color, but I don't expect it would work for evolution.
Some atheists seem to have made atheism into a religion of sorts, preaching and trying to convert and making obviously flawed arguments. I call them "religious atheists" and that royally [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]es them off. I think most atheists also find these "religiously atheistic" folks to be annoying and embarrassing.
But most atheists are nice, reasonable folks. They're not immoral as some might think, though they do have different moral standards (largely based off the Golden Rule, but with different ideas of what is good or bad for people). They might think we're deluded and try to make us see reason (especially when someone else brings up religion), but being reasonable folks they know there's no point in pushing their opinion where its not welcome.
The First Way: Argument from Motion
[snip]
The Second Way: Argument from Efficient Causes
[snip]
The Third Way: Argument from Possibility and Necessity (Reductio argument)
[snip]
The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being
The Fifth Way: Argument from Design
"In the universe" being the operative words. We have evidence and knowledge of how the universe works, but we have little beyond speculation to go on when it comes to the Big Bang.
Why? Surely you would merely have to be able to create a universe to fit the argument. That is not omnipotence, as the universe is finite.
I would think it illogical to regard them as necessary.
No, as far as I understand time started with the Big Bang. Perhaps it was finite, but so is the universe.
Completeness of what? I'm seeing yet another subjective view of perfection here.
Can you explain how this applies to Aquinas' arguments, or arguments for God in general?
If you find life to not be good, then you are not viewing it as a good thing. I don't see how this demonstrates an objective view of life being good.
Slavery, dictatorships and a downtrodden class have existed even longer, and exist even now, and there are many who consider this to be a good thing.
For that, you'll need a better explanation of evolution than I can give you right now. I'll try to put one together if you want, but for now I'll say that evolution is a matter of the environment. You get random mutations, but it is the mutation that reproduces the most that survives. There is no goal or aim, but evolution is not the pure randomness that chance is.
No. It is not about some cause, or some being, or something greater. God needs to be meaningfully intelligent, or conscious, or sentient. None of the arguments above have even just the faintest trace of any of that.
It might be true that God would also be the, say, prime mover. But you cannot go and argue for a prime mover and pass that off as necessarily God. It smacks of affirming the consequent.
Meaningfully intelligent. And not just via a meaningless label.
Provisions for the existence of God do not require provisions for the entire definition of God.
That would be a separate argument. If it is found that God as an initial mover necessitates certain traits, then God must simply possess those traits to satisfy the role of God.
I would think though that you ought to argue for something - how to put it? - for something more juicy.
I mean you would not go and cite the possibility of space travel as an argument for Klingon Birds of Prey.
I'm arguing that a concept most commonly labeled God is reasonably the only possible initial cause, and that there is other evidence for this.
How can something be aimless but not chance? Evolution must be directed or random. A middle option would suggest it is both yet somehow neither. This works for shades of color, but I don't expect it would work for evolution.
Ah, but a Klingon Bird of Prey is a concrete example of the abstract concept of space travel.
I'm arguing that a concept most commonly labeled God is reasonably the only possible initial cause, and that there is other evidence for this.
I am not, however, arguing that this must be the Christian God, or any other specific God known to any religion. For that matter, this God could be someone no one has even come close to defining.
The earliest moments of the Big Bang are speculative, a lot of it is theoretical. The Big Bang is also part of what happens "in the universe" being that it is a description of events, not any sort of initial force or cause.
I'm not sure how all of that follows.
Language and philosophy require the use of abstracts. Anything that cannot be directly observed is either in the mind, or abstract.
The Big Bang is a description of the initial events within time. There is no explanation of how time and space exist. In fact, the universal laws must be assumed for the Big Bang to work.
Now, because the universe is finite, and current observation makes a closed universe very unlikely, it is not reasonable to assume an infinite chain of causes. Therefor, we arrive at the necessity of an initial cause.
Wikipedia: Perfection is, broadly, a state of completeness and flawlessness.
Perfection, completeness, and flawlessness are abstracts. As such, they encompasses different traits depending on the object they describe. In the sense of a perfect God, this requires a completeness and flawlessness which transcends subjectivity.
What Aquinas referred to as perfection in the world/universe is akin to the idea of the Fine-tuned Universe.
Your summary of the 4th proof went from "I want it to be so it is true" to "there is a balance, therefore God exists" to which I argued that we don't really see a balance. A balance should be expected of a universe without direction. What can be observed is an upward trend of progress; things build up, increase, and improve more often than break down, decrease, and decline. While we do see the latter, providing the universal possibility of balance, the overall sum is not balance, but growth.
I think we'd find that suicidal individuals believe life to be not good only temporarily. If a murderer believes life is not good and therefor kills, should he be left to his subjective view of life's goodness? Or would we agree that his view is skewed? Objectivity is what exists beyond the moment and beyond the self. A single moment to the contrary of a universal truth does not simply dismantle it.
I don't know about many, I expect people who think any of these are good things are relatively few. Would you honestly state that slavery, dictatorships, and downtrodden classes should be allowed to exist, regardless of whatever power to change these circumstances? Should genocide be allowed only because the killers believe it is right?
Even if the outcome of a random mutation is predictable, the mechanism itself remains random. Allowing for an infinite possibility of variables, it's as likely that evolution would have produced a stalemate of equally fit species. Of course, evolution is not the only factor at play in survival, but environmental advantages and disadvantages provide a greater possibility of relative stalemate between species. If some aspect of evolution somehow counters this, I'd like to know about it.
What do I think of atheists?
I think they're dead sexy, that's what.
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