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What is wrong with this premise?
RE: What is wrong with this premise?
(February 19, 2015 at 9:47 pm)Dystopia Wrote: Heywood, prove me that everything needs a cause.

Not possible. What's possible is logically proving that not everything needs a cause. After all, "something" must've existed from infinity past and which had no cause. Otherwise, if there was a point in "time" when literally nothing existed, then nothing would've arisen from this literal nothingness. But we know that this is not the case. So there must've been some infinite "something".

Of course, Heywood will say that's God. But it doesn't have to be. It could be something metaphysical but not conscious that's behind the structure and workings of some multiverse that is infinitely divided into all these universes. Or it could be something else. Saying "God therefore must exist" is just God of the gaps argument.

(February 20, 2015 at 9:06 pm)Heywood Wrote:
(February 20, 2015 at 7:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: We do not know that the circumstances, whatever they might be, in which a God would seem probably exist. There is no parallel here at all. So far, the only place we know God exists is in the human imagination, as an idea.

So far the only place we know extra terrestrial aliens exist is in the human imagination, as an idea. So it is exactly parallel. Aliens ought to exist in a finite emergent complex universe as large as ours. Eternal, infinite intellect ought to exist in a reality which is eternal, infinite and eternally emergent complex.

Granted, my conclusion is based on some assumption I can't prove.
1. Reality is eternal.
2. Reality is eternally emergent complex.
3. There is no upper bound on intellect, ability, or knowledge.

However given these assumptions it seems to me that God ought to exist.

Even if we grant the above premises, this doesn't lead to the conclusion that there must be an eternally intelligent divine being.

At best, it shows that intelligence infinitely grows in an infinite universe to no bounds.
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RE: What is wrong with this premise?
If anything his argument proves there will be super-AIs and post-humans in the future.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. - Denis Diderot

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing. - Gore Vidal
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RE: What is wrong with this premise?
(February 20, 2015 at 9:06 pm)Heywood Wrote:
(February 20, 2015 at 7:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: We do not know that the circumstances, whatever they might be, in which a God would seem probably exist. There is no parallel here at all. So far, the only place we know God exists is in the human imagination, as an idea.

So far the only place we know extra terrestrial aliens exist is in the human imagination, as an idea. So it is exactly parallel.
No, it's not. We already know of circumstances in which terrestrial life may exist-- the Earth. We therefore conjecture, quite reasonably, that in a universe which is practically infinite, a planet of the approximate size and composition of Earth may exist, and may hold life.

Your conjecture about God is not based on observing those features of a universe or other framework in which said God might be expected to exist-- except as a flight of pure mathematical or philosophical fantasy.

Quote:Aliens ought to exist in a finite emergent complex universe as large as ours. Eternal, infinite intellect ought to exist in a reality which is eternal, infinite and eternally emergent complex.
I don't know what "eternally emergent complex" means to you. Could you explain it simply?
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