(May 11, 2016 at 10:47 am)Rhythm Wrote: -because it doesn't end in -therefore god exists-, which is the desired and advertised conclusion.  It is not an argument in support of or evidence -for a god-.  It's simply the preamble to a leap of faith.

You are right. It concludes an uncaused cause, timeless, immaterial, personal and powerful enough to create something from nothing. You use other arguments from natural theology to conclude other properties or characteristics.

(May 11, 2016 at 12:33 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(May 11, 2016 at 12:27 pm)robvalue Wrote: Oh yeah, good idea! Thanks

What could I do with that

God versus...LOGIC!  [emoji41]

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED"

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

(May 11, 2016 at 2:24 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(May 11, 2016 at 10:47 am)Rhythm Wrote: -because it doesn't end in -therefore god exists-, which is the desired and advertised conclusion.  It is not an argument in support of or evidence -for a god-.  It's simply the preamble to a leap of faith.

You are right. It concludes an uncaused cause, timeless, immaterial, personal and powerful enough to create something from nothing. You use other arguments from natural theology to conclude other properties or characteristics.

How does it conclude, "personal" btw? And...what do you mean by "personal"?

(May 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: Why do you think God needs to "think" about anything prior to creation? 

Steve, this is idiotic. It is YOU that brought up the notion of God thinking prior to creation, not me! Let's review your words (p. 29)

(May 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: If timelessness is not an essential, but rather a contingent characteristic of God, God could have decided to exist timelessly in the past and then decide to create the universe and in doing so became temporal.

and here... (p.38)

(May 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: Even a series of mental events is enough to form a before and after (therefore some measure of "time").

So the question is, why do YOU think God needs to think/decide/have a series of mental events prior to creation? Why do YOU think there was some "before and after (therefore some measure of "time")" contrary to Craig's assertions?

(May 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: Why can't causation be simultaneous with its effect?

1) Define cause and effect.
2) Demonstrate simultaneous cause and effect is plausible under your definition.
3) Even if we grant whatever you mean by simultaneous cause and effect, you still can't get around the fact that, God could not exist timelessly and changelessly without the universe prior to causing time to exist within the universe. This is a non sequitur.

(May 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: Why does causation presuppose the existence of time? 

Review the first video in my "Timelessness" thread here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-42797.html
Time becomes an emergent property of causality. Or, put in terms of the video, "Causality is responsible for Time."

(May 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: Why can't God become temporal the moment there was something to have a temporal relationship with?

That's not the question. It has never been the question, as I've stated emphatically before. It's the question you want to answer, but it's not the question being asked. The real question, which I'll try to state again in another way borrowing some of your words is, How could God ever exist atemporally prior to the moment there was something to have a temporal relationship with? If he did not ever exist atemporally, if God's first moment was simultaneous with the beginning of time within the universe, then God has never been anything other than temporal.

(May 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: You misunderstood the sentence: "The image of God existing idly before creation is just that: a figment of the imagination." The point was NOT to imagine God sitting idly.

No, you misunderstand the mixed message Craig is stating. When Craig expresses that God was ever extant "timeless without creation," in a "changeless, undifferentiated state," one MUST picture "God existing idly before creation." Because if God did not exist in a timeless, changeless state sitting idly before creation, then God either 1) was NOT timeless or changeless before creation, or 2) Had a beginning simultaneously with the universe.

I'll try to make this clear to you once again: If God ever existed in a changeless, undifferentiated, timeless state without creation, then this necessarily happened prior to/before creation; anything that happens prior to/before something else defines two different states; a causal relationship between two different states is a measure of time and therefore cannot be timeless.

Let's try two simple Yes/No questions based on our discussion, addressing the implications of each answer:

1) Did God exist timelessly and changelessly by himself, prior to the creation of the universe?
1a) If Yes, then by definition, something that is changeless cannot change, something that is timeless will never transition from one state to another; therefore, God could not have logically been the agent of change, and could not have transitioned from a (timeless + no universe) state to a (temporal + universe) state.
1b) If No, see question 2.

2) Was God's existence simultaneous with his creation of the universe?
2a) If Yes, and if the universe had a beginning as theists' assert, then God had a beginning at the exact same moment as the universe. If two things can begin to exist at the exact same moment, and we have empirical evidence for one (the universe) and absolutely no evidence for the other (God), then we can safely excise the latter as wholly superfluous.
2b) If No, then God must have preceded the universe, see question 1.

Steve, I can't tell if you really don't understand the blatant contradictions within Craig's arguments, or you are just being disagreeable and purposefully deceptive at this point, like William Lane Craig often is. Any way you look at this, a timeless/changeless being can't implement change, and therefore this imagined deity can't be the explanation for anything.

Numbers and relationships don't exist in the natural world. They are functions of the concept of quantity which itself is a function of the idea of an object. In the universe at large there is only undifferentiated being. The desk is a part of the room which also contains the chair. None of these are distinct objects except in the conception of the mind. There is nothing special about the substance of the desk which separates it from the air surrounding it. We impute a distinction by virtue of the way our senses break things down into separate parts. The parts don't really exist as parts, it's just a function of the way our senses perceive the whole. We 'break it down' into parts because that is the way our senses work. If we didn't have this breaking down into distinct objects, we wouldn't have the concept of quantity. Quantity, numbers, and relationships are artifacts of the granularity of our senses. As artifact, they don't exist as natural kinds in the universe. That we break things down into objects and parts when we perceive them isn't grounded in God. So quantity and number aren't grounded in God.

(May 11, 2016 at 5:13 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Numbers and relationships don't exist in the natural world. They are functions of the concept of quantity which itself is a function of the idea of an object. In the universe at large there is only undifferentiated being. The desk is a part of the room which also contains the chair. None of these are distinct objects except in the conception of the mind. There is nothing special about the substance of the desk which separates it from the air surrounding it. We impute a distinction by virtue of the way our senses break things down into separate parts. The parts don't really exist as parts, it's just a function of the way our senses perceive the whole. We 'break it down' into parts because that is the way our senses work. If we didn't have this breaking down into distinct objects, we wouldn't have the concept of quantity. Quantity, numbers, and relationships are artifacts of the granularity of our senses. As artifact, they don't exist as natural kinds in the universe. That we break things down into objects and parts when we perceive them isn't grounded in God. So quantity and number aren't grounded in God.

Aaaaaaaaand back to the dunce corner I go...[emoji13]

(May 11, 2016 at 11:23 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Since Steve went on about how sound it is, I decided to take another look at it:

1.Whatever begins to exist has a cause; (What is this based on? With the exception of virtual particles, we've never witnessed anything 'beginning to exist', it's all transformations from previous states. And virtual particles don't have a cause, just a reason).
2.The universe began to exist; Therefore: (We don't know that. The universe could have existed eternally in different states.)
3.The universe has a cause. (Fallacy of composition; the rules that apply within the universe don't necessarily apply TO the universe. That things need a cause is something we derive from the behavior of things within the universe.)

So, this syllogism is flawed at every turn. Craig follows it with this beauty, as though the previous bit had actually been proven:

1.The universe has a cause; (Not established.)
2.If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful; Therefore: (That list doesn't even follow; it's  a non-sequitur; and immaterial, timeless, and spaceless is literally a description of nothing. Since the math works for a vacuum fluctuation being enough to start a universe; 'enormously powerful' doesn't seem to be justified. Changeless is a contradictory attribute for something that starts changing things. And why couldn't an impersonal cause be responsible? And why couldn't the cause be caused, an infinite chain of causality is no more implausible that a changeless being that changes things?)
3.An uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful. (Just a re-statement of 2.; apparently just so it looks like it's in the proper form of an argument).

Yet Steve is mystified by why we're not impressed by this. Steve, the purpose of apologetics isn't to convince non-believers, it's to reassure believers that they're being reasonable.

1. WLC answers what this is based on for like three pages. Which specific part do you have a problem with? 
2. It could have. You would have to defend why you think a infinite regression of events is not absurd.
3. WLC addressed that objection here:

Quote:In order to understand this objection we need to understand the fallacy of composition. This is the fallacy of reasoning that because every part of a thing has a certain property, therefore the whole thing has that same property. While wholes do sometimes possess the properties of their parts (for example, a fence, every picket of which is green, is also green), this is not always the case. For example, every little part of an elephant may be light in weight, but that does not imply that the whole elephant is light in weight.

Now I have never argued that because every part of the universe has a cause, therefore the whole universe has a cause. That would be manifestly fallacious. Rather the reasons I have offered for thinking that everything that begins to exist has a cause are these:

1. Something cannot come from nothing. To claim that something can come into being out of nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you've got the magician, not to mention the hat! But if you deny premise (1) you've got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.

2. If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing. Think about it: why don't bicycles and Beethoven and root beer just pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can pop into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can't be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn't have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, since there isn't anything to be constrained!

3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise (1). Premise (1) is constantly verified and never falsified. It is hard to understand how any atheist committed to modern science could deny that premise (1) is more plausibly true than false in light of the evidence.[7]

Note well that the third reason is an appeal to inductive reasoning, not reasoning by composition. It's drawing an inductive inference about all the members of a class of things based on a sample of the class. Inductive reasoning undergirds all of science and is not to be confused with reasoning by composition, which is a fallacy.

So this objection is aimed at a straw man of the objector's own construction.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/obj...z48OEBrSeW

(May 11, 2016 at 11:23 am)Time Traveler Wrote:

(May 11, 2016 at 10:28 am)SteveII Wrote: So, say in another identical universe, there were no minds to contemplate such things. Would that mean that the concept of 8 objects does not exist? Does that mean that E=MC^2 still does not have a mathematical relationship? Does that mean that the idea of P then Q; P therefore Q would not have meaning? Words just represent concepts.

Your problem, Steve, is in imagining an "identical universe." Instead, imagine an Alice in Wonderland universe on LSD cranked up to 11. In that universe, the concept of 8 objects would have no meaning, because every grouping would be an ever-changing collection of random objects. Energy=Mass*Speed of Light^2 would be replaced by Penguins=Purple*Toothpicks, changing instantly to Vodka=Cellphones/Ant Farts, and so on. The concept of P then Q; P therefore Q wouldn't hold in such a crazy universe consisting only of nonsensical random fluctuations.

Therefore, it is only because of the natural observational consistencies within a universe like ours that logic and math hold any meaning and can describe and model these concepts inside our human brains. These concepts are not at all "transcendent" as some theists would have it, but very much dependent upon the empirical properties of the type of universe we find ourselves in. However, even within our universe, we have spacetime distortions, quantum uncertainties, superpositions and entanglements, dark matter, dark energy, etc., which we cannot fully explain given our current logical or mathematical tools - actual attributes of this universe which seem almost as bizarre as the one we might imagine on the other side of the looking glass.

I wasn't going to get so formal on a small point like this but...it seems that's what you want so...the term is "possible worlds" and the idea is used to express modal claims. To put it formally, in all possible worlds, I believe the concept of 8 objects and the idea of P then Q; P therefore Q are necessarily true propositions. 

Wikipedia has a short article in which they define the types of modal claims you can make when discussing possible worlds. For example from the article: 

"Necessarily true propositions (often simply called necessary propositions) are those that are true in all possible worlds (for example: "2 + 2 = 4"; "all bachelors are unmarried").[1] "

So, why do you think these concepts are only true in some possible worlds?

(May 11, 2016 at 2:24 pm)SteveII Wrote: You are right. It concludes an uncaused cause, timeless, immaterial, personal and powerful enough to create something from nothing. You use other arguments from natural theology to conclude other properties or characteristics.

I'm not sure how it concludes that, but okay.  These other arguments, unspoken but apparently the -actual- reason for belief..... it would be a shame to find out they were support for god in the same way that the KCA is. You say they conclude "other properties" of god as though we'd already established any property of god, or even that god -is- to begin with. I'm not at all impressed or convinced by the effort put forward so far. It's left me with a contradictory and incoherent description of a god.

(May 11, 2016 at 12:14 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(May 11, 2016 at 11:57 am)Rhythm Wrote: I think this might be turning into gibberish.  We're told that an unchanging god becomes something, we're told that concepts don't require a particular universe to exist, and also that the concepts of math and logic are dependent upon a universe in which god exists - possibly even dependent upon that god itself within that particular universe.  We're told that god is limited by possibility but also that possibility is somehow defined by or rooted in whatever it is a god does or is.  We're told that a temporal cause can exist in the absence of a temporal framework and even in the absence of existence.

All of this, confusingly, we're told in defense of an argument which fails to establish what is being claimed.  Which is -supposed- to make someones beliefs rational....somehow?

I think, "turning into" is rather generous here.  [emoji12]

The worst part for me is all the extraordinary fiat regarding god's nature and attributes (assuming we could make rational sense of any of this) without a tiny shred of verifiable evidence to support it.   But we are the dummies for not "just having faith..."

If you think the inferred qualities of uncaused cause, timeless, immaterial, personal, and powerful a presented as fiat, then either you do not understand the term or you do not understand the argument. Regardless of whether you believe the premises to be true, it is a logical argument. Simply dismissing it does nothing to make your case. The only way to defeat an argument is to show some form of logical fallacy or provide defeaters for the premises (see below). Incredulity is not a defeater.  

From wikipedia: 

In epistemology, a defeater is a belief B1 that is held to be incompatible with another belief B2, hence arguments or evidence supporting B1 can be used to refute B2.

- An undercutting defeater is B1 such that B1 does not oppose B2, but rather that the ramifications of B1, were it possible to obtain, casts doubt on the premises for B2.

- An opposing defeater is B1 such that B1 has a factual or otherwise claim that, were it to be obtained, would falsify B2.