(October 9, 2018 at 8:07 am)polymath257 Wrote:

(October 8, 2018 at 2:27 pm)SteveII Wrote: I am happy to discuss each point with you in as much detail as you like. However, I am not going to have dueling Amazon book links. Pick one and give me the basics.

I'll start on the one you did actually expand on. The reason there must be a first cause is that a infinite amount of past causes/effects is not logically possible. There is no such possibility as an actual infinite number of anything in the real world. If there were an infinite number of past events, we could never have gotten to the events of today because there would still need to be an infinite amount of events that need to pass before we can get to today. 

No scientist has ever had a theory where things come into being ex nihilo.

There is no *logical* contradiction to an infinite regress. There is also no *logical* contradiction to an actual infinity in the real world. Both of those are positions taken because of an adherence to Aristotelian philosophy that has been superseded by Cantorian logic.

Now, we can address the *scientific* question of whether there are actual inifnities. Butit remains that there is no *logical* issue with such.

As for creation ex nihilo, even religion doesn't have that: it assumes a pre-existing deity. And that deity has no beginning, There is no *logical* difference is the position that the universe has always existed in some form (the modern variant is to have a multiverse). Now, I will agree that this has not been scientifically demonstrated, but we are talking about *logical* possibilities here. And an infinite time into the past in a multiverse is certainly a logical possibility.

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(October 8, 2018 at 1:02 pm)SteveII Wrote: That was easy. My goal was do drive you to a ridiculous position--but you ran there on your own as fast as you could. 99.99% of our knowledge of the world's history before 20th century is a result of reading what people wrote.  

Second, you just admitted that writings are evidence (even as you mischaracterized their status).  So, the NT is evidence of Jesus and his claims. Glad we got that out of the way. 

Reading what people wrote *skeptically*. There are large masses of BS in historical writings. If you read Herodotus, there are clear falsehoods and contradictions. But there is also some real history. A good historian *never* takes the written word as definitive. The bias of the author, the sensitivities of the time and location, the rhetorical goals for writing in the first place have to ALL be taken into account. This means that even in 'serious' history, much of the writing has to be dismissed. When miracles and portents are seen, they are *uniformly* dismissed as superstition unless there is independent collaboration.

So, for example, that nobody else reported darkness and people coming out of graves when Jesus died suggests that aspect of the story was exaggerated.

Quote:Remember that those across the empire would not have had direct knowledge of the events in Jerusalem. Most believers only believed because of hearsay evidence. The travel times were long and travel was dangerous. Paul himself never saw Jesus (except in a delusion). Given that he clearly made up much of the story, that those he told believed him isn't any evidence of the actual events.

Why would they have no direct knowledge of the events in Jerusalem? It's even easier than that--we know why from the researcher Luke:

And again, the fact that this remarkable story was not collaborated by independent sources *when it would be expected to be* just shows it to be an exaggeration and unreliable.

On your last point, it's even worse for christian apologists than that. The early Roman state church and the medieval churches went out of their way to excise any independent sources in existence for the time perod when their supposed Jesus was allegedly active. Including a number of writers who wrote extensively on the area and knew what they were talking about.

This is strong evidence that the whole edifece of christian belief is based on a lie. Why destroy independent evidence if it wasn't?

(October 9, 2018 at 10:39 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: By saying that you can have something which is both endless and completed.

Do you think that atheist constantly insult everyone and feel the need to declare victory on everything, because they are insecure about their position, or is it just like an angry child?

Says the guy who passionately insists that a dead jew came back to life for his fucking sins.

Grow up, sonny.  You sound like a jackass.

(October 10, 2018 at 2:09 am)Minimalist Wrote:

(October 9, 2018 at 10:39 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: By saying that you can have something which is both endless and completed.

Do you think that atheist constantly insult everyone and feel the need to declare victory on everything, because they are insecure about their position, or is it just like an angry child?

Says the guy who passionately insists that a dead jew came back to life for his fucking sins.

Grow up, sonny.  You sound like a jackass.

Or says the guy who believes that a god gave birth to himself then killed himself to free everyone from a mistake that's totally his fault to start with .

A fundamental principle of our relationship with reality is that we don’t get to tell it what it can and can’t be, based on what we find reasonable. It’s why science deals with building up positive models which correlate with our experience, rather than trying to discount things.

Of course, someone can rant and rave all they want. They can be absolutely certain that what they think about reality is true. But they can still be wrong. That’s why forming testable hypotheses is so important, once we have spent time abstractly thinking about reality. Otherwise we're exploring the clouds.

(October 9, 2018 at 9:41 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(October 9, 2018 at 8:07 am)polymath257 Wrote: There is no *logical* contradiction to an infinite regress. There is also no *logical* contradiction to an actual infinity in the real world. Both of those are positions taken because of an adherence to Aristotelian philosophy that has been superseded by Cantorian logic.

Where you not just recently saying that these axioms are just made up, and need to see if they correspond to the real world?  As well; how does this show that the issue with the logic against having an acutal infinity and against an infinite regress?   It seems that you just assume that the numbers and axioms (which you admittedly make up) so; I don't see how this is supersedes anything and gets around the issues of traversing an infinite regress.

Once again, there is no *logical* contradiction with an actual infinity or infinite regress. It is a question of science whether either turns out to be the case. But that goes beyond mere logic to a question of observation.


The axioms and their lack of self-contradiction show that there is no *logical* issue with infinities.They differ from finite quantities, clearly, but there is no actual contradiction. So, assuming standard two-valued logic along with quantifiers, there is no logical issue with there being infinities that are 'completed'. That said, there is a lot of very poor philosophy about infinity that was done prior to Cantor's work. ANYTHING concerning infinity should take that work into consideration.

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(October 9, 2018 at 11:29 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(October 9, 2018 at 11:26 am)Grandizer Wrote: So Steve, no counter response to my response?
https://atheistforums.org/thread-56808-p...pid1827684

Oh, speaking of infinity, here's a link to a thread in which both Steve and RR showed they couldn't do maths and consequently got their asses spanked badly by a number of us. It's an amusing read, enjoy:

https://atheistforums.org/thread-53460.html

If your math leads to logical  contradictions, then I think that you need to re-examine your math.  But it's not really about math, but assumptions that haven't been properly thought through.

Yes, of course. But infinities do NOT lead to logical contradictions. They are different than finite quantities, yes, but they obey standard logic when correctly done.

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(October 9, 2018 at 12:19 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(October 9, 2018 at 11:32 am)Grandizer Wrote: You are an idiot. Just as 0/0 = indeterminate is not a logical contradiction, it's the same with infinity - infinity.

Not surprised you still don't get it.

I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about the concept of an anctual infinity or of crossing an actual infinity, by stepping through each one.  As I said, not talking about the math. The problem is with its assumptions.

And what assumption do you see as being problematic? Again, the consistency of the mathematics shows that there is no *logical* issue with actual infinities. Whether they exist in the real world is  question for science, not logic (logic not being strong enough to resolve the issue).

You make *assumptions* that addition, subtraction, multiplication, and diviision work the same way for infinities quantities as they do for finite ones. That is your mistake and is what leads to your problems. But the fact is that those operations work *differently* for infinite quantities than they do for finite ones. Those differences are NOT contradictions because we are talking about different types of things.

(October 10, 2018 at 8:00 am)polymath257 Wrote:

(October 9, 2018 at 9:41 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote: Where you not just recently saying that these axioms are just made up, and need to see if they correspond to the real world?  As well; how does this show that the issue with the logic against having an acutal infinity and against an infinite regress?   It seems that you just assume that the numbers and axioms (which you admittedly make up) so; I don't see how this is supersedes anything and gets around the issues of traversing an infinite regress.

Once again, there is no *logical* contradiction with an actual infinity or infinite regress. It is a question of science whether either turns out to be the case. But that goes beyond mere logic to a question of observation.


The axioms and their lack of self-contradiction show that there is no *logical* issue with infinities.They differ from finite quantities, clearly, but there is no actual contradiction. So, assuming standard two-valued logic along with quantifiers, there is no logical issue with there being infinities that are 'completed'. That said, there is a lot of very poor philosophy about infinity that was done prior to Cantor's work. ANYTHING concerning infinity should take that work into consideration.

If the underlying assumptions or premises are illogical or have a contradiction, then there is a problem at the very foundation.   Now I will agree, that we can have an abstract concept of and actual infinity, and you can extrapolate out an infinite process.  We must have an abstract notion of an actual infinity as we are discussing it.  It would seem that you are either modifying the terms, and thus talking about something else, or that you have  contradiction.  You cannot have a quantity of things, that is both endless, and complete. It cannot exist  You can have a process that goes on without any bounds, but that is a potential infinite.

It doesn't matter how strong the house is, if it is built on sand.

(October 9, 2018 at 12:24 pm)SteveII Wrote: And here are my posts that you could not address because you got in way over your head:

1. An actual infinite consists of real (not abstract) objects.
2. In 100% of our experiences and 100% of our scientific inquiries, quantities of real objects can have all the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division applied to them.
3. As Hilbert's Hotel shows, these operations cannot be applied to the concept of an actual infinite without creating contradictions and absurdities
4. Classical propositional logic does not allow for contradictory statements to be true.
5. Therefore an actual infinite of real objects is logically impossible.

Infinite set theory is not a defeater for (2) because infinite set theory is not itself a conclusion derived from a logical process. To defeat (2) you have to give logical reasons why we should expect an infinite quantity of objects to behave fundamentally different than a finite quantity of objects.

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1. An event is a change in a real object
2. From any point in the past, there is a finite amount of events to the present and can be counted down en...e3...e2...e1...e0(now).
3. If there are an infinite amount of events in the past, we could never count down from infinity to e3...e2...e1...e0 because there would always be an infinite amount of events that would still have happened on the leading edge of the series.
4. With an infinite series of past events we could never arrive to the present.
5. Therefore an actual infinite series of past events is impossible.

We can expect an infinite quantity to have different properties than finite quantities because they are different things. And, arguing logically from the properties of infinite quantities, we do, in fact, find that they are different in their arithmetic from finite quantities.

Your first 2 is simply wrong. Science uses those operations when they are useful for explanations. But there is no reason that the allowed explanation't have more than just those properties of finite sets.

Hilbert's hotel just shows that the properties of infinite sets are different than those for finite sets. But there is no *logical* contradiction: just a violation of intuitions derived from finite quantities. Again, that is to be expected because infinite quantities are not the same as finite ones: we expect differences.

Once again, we *know* that things like the Hilbert Hotel are paradoxes only, not actual contradictions. The rules for finite sets are violated, yes. But there are consistent rules which can be applied to infinite sets.

In your second list, 1 and 2 are true. In 3, you are assuming that there is a first event from which to count. That is exactly the point: there is no first event. There are only finitely many events between any two, but there are still an infinite number of events. That is not a contradiction. There is no *start* from which the counting begins. there is just always counting.

And 4 and 5 are derived from your mistake in 3, and are invalid.

Once again, you show no logical contradiction, just a violation of your intuitions from finite sets. But we *expect* infinite and finite collections to work differently because they are different.

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(October 10, 2018 at 8:13 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(October 10, 2018 at 8:00 am)polymath257 Wrote: Once again, there is no *logical* contradiction with an actual infinity or infinite regress. It is a question of science whether either turns out to be the case. But that goes beyond mere logic to a question of observation.


The axioms and their lack of self-contradiction show that there is no *logical* issue with infinities.They differ from finite quantities, clearly, but there is no actual contradiction. So, assuming standard two-valued logic along with quantifiers, there is no logical issue with there being infinities that are 'completed'. That said, there is a lot of very poor philosophy about infinity that was done prior to Cantor's work. ANYTHING concerning infinity should take that work into consideration.

If the underlying assumptions or premises are illogical or have a contradiction, then there is a problem at the very foundation.   Now I will agree, that we can have an abstract concept of and actual infinity, and you can extrapolate out an infinite process.  We must have an abstract notion of an actual infinity as we are discussing it.  It would seem that you are either modifying the terms, and thus talking about something else, or that you have  contradiction.  You cannot have a quantity of things, that is both endless, and complete. It cannot exist  You can have a process that goes on without any bounds, but that is a potential infinite.

It doesn't matter how strong the house is, if it is built on sand.

And what I am saying is that your 'contradictions' are not actual contradictions, but merely paradoxes. There is no *logical* issue with a completed infinity. It causes no internal contradiction.

Yes, you can have a collection of things that is both endless (in once sense) and complete (in a different sense). The collection of all natural numbers is an example.

N={n: n is a counting number}

In this, 1, 5, 10, 129747 are all in this set. But 12.4 and pi are not in this set. This is NOT an ambiguous collection. It does NOT need to be listed in order to be a complete set of things. But, in a different sense, it is 'endless' in that there is always a larger number from any one you pick.

This is an *actual* infinity, not just a potential infinity. We can even talk about the even larger infinity of all subsets of this set. This larger set has the 'same size' as the collection of all decimal numbers. Again, this latter is a well-defined set. There is no ambiguity what is in the set and what is not. But it is 'endless' and even 'uncountable' and is a 'larger' set than the set of counting numbers.

This house is built on bedrock. The mathematics of the last 150 years shows that to be the case. The problem is that you are confusing the finite with the infinite and NOT using logic. If logic is done *properly*, there is no problem.

qualia is good evidence for existence of something supernatural

(October 9, 2018 at 10:39 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: By saying that you can have something which is both endless and completed.

Since you believe that is a contradiction, which do you think God is not: endless or complete?

(October 10, 2018 at 8:35 am)Dmitry1983 Wrote: qualia is good evidence for existence of something supernatural

Really? Why do you say that? In particular, why do you think that qualia aren't just brain states?