(September 8, 2021 at 5:42 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:

(September 8, 2021 at 5:31 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Doesn’t matter what additional ad hoc qualifier you dream up that appears to you to make your as hoc bullshit god harder to disprove.   Disproval was totally unneeded to dismiss your god before you dreamt up the qualifier, it is just as totally unneeded afterwards.     

Without your qualifier, Your god can be trivially dismissed as something that could not possibly be more bullshitty.   it can still be dismissed with the exact same level of certainty as being of exactly that same sublime level of bullshittiness with the additions of your qualifier.

Read what I wrote more carefully, dear bullshitter. A universe requires a cause, it can't just pop out of nothing. That's why the concept of God is necessary, it's because we care about rationality -unlike you, you think I am arbitrarily adding qualifiers to God to make it escape falsification. Well, no, you got it backwards: our position is that a deity is a necessary condition to existence, it's not an optional add-on. No god means no existence. No entity with sufficient qualifiers means no Anomalocaris.

(September 8, 2021 at 5:17 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Because you have no way of demonstrating that it’s true. 


You can say that, but you’d be wrong, lol. 

I see you're cherry picking what you answer to. I said that something like there being infinitely many prime numbers isn't subjected to falsification by experiments, we reach its truth by logical arguments, and it is evidently true.

Your god proposition is neither self-evident, nor provable by logical argumentation. In order for a deductive argument to be sound, it needs to be valid and have true premises. The only way to demonstrate the truth of your premises is with evidence; ya know, that thing you said we were mistaken in asking you for. Further, by your own definition, god cannot be self-evident, because god is not-of-nature and not empirically detectable, therefore the natural word cannot be direct evidence of him.

(September 8, 2021 at 9:31 am)Klorophyll Wrote:

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(September 8, 2021 at 8:00 am)polymath257 Wrote: I disagree. The reason we can look at a car engine and know it was designed is that we know through experience that car engines don't arise spontaneously from the application of the laws of nature without a designer. But we also know that there are a great many situations where the laws of nature can produce high complexity *without* a designer being involved because of feedback loops and sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

Why do you separate the laws of nature and the designer? Why can't these laws be an instrument of a supreme designer?

(September 8, 2021 at 8:00 am)polymath257 Wrote: As for the physical laws themselves, I think it is incoherent to talk about their being 'designed' or 'caused' simply because those physical laws are what govern causality. 

Do you have some source or justification of this ? 
So, if there were no physical laws, do you think causality could be violated..???

(September 8, 2021 at 8:00 am)polymath257 Wrote: Instead, it is most coherent to have the laws be basic (uncaused) and the universe obeying such laws naturally. To postulate an intelligent designer requires a great deal *more* complexity. Think about what is required to even have a mind: the number of interacting parts, the feedback loops, the very laws of physics required to allow for such. When that is taken into account, it becomes far *more* probable that a few basic laws are fundamental and that consciousness, minds, and other things like that are the *result* of such laws, not the cause of them.

If we accept this, then it follows that the universe is eternal. If the laws of physics are uncaused, then there always was a universe where these laws apply (since they are descriptive of some existent state of affairs, not prescriptive).

And asserting that the universe is eternal is simply a claim, that I doubt anybody can prove.

If there were no physical laws, there would be no causality at all. Causality (such as exists) *is* a physical law or derived from such.

For there to *be* a designer takes enough structure and orderliness that some sort of physical laws (or laws governing the behavior of the designer) are required. So the most fundamental laws *cannot* be designed, but must be uncaused.

No, it does NOT follow that the universe is eternal, just that the physical laws, time, space, matter, and energy are co-existent. It is *possible* that all are of limited duration. of course, it is also *possible* that they are all eternal (infinite in duration). We just don't know.

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(September 8, 2021 at 6:29 pm)Jehanne Wrote:

(September 8, 2021 at 5:42 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: A universe requires a cause, it can't just pop out of nothing.

Would you please define, as you understand it, the words "universe" and "nothing"?

Not to mention 'pop out' in a context where time is finite in extent.

@Klorophyll

Also, where have you demonstrated that the cause of the universe, or collection of universes if you like, is necessarily supernatural?

(September 8, 2021 at 4:40 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:

(September 8, 2021 at 3:49 pm)Angrboda Wrote: That's not what I mean by natural, so your objection is moot.  By natural I mean that the thing is obeying whatever nomological principles apply to its local reality.  A being in a predecessor universe may lack any of the necessary characteristics required of a god in being a mere subject of its own reality and also be the cause of this universe.  The prior universe need not obey the assumptions of the cosmological argument, so the case for a god as a cause stops there.

As you already know, the cosmological argument has very few assumptions, actually, one assumption: causality. Causality is a critical assumption. Honestly, I don't have a lot of respect for any position allowing for a violation of causality. It's not very good philosophy to reject the simplest principles of thought just to escape an argument.

I haven't rejected the principle of causality. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Because we know nothing about any predecessor universe, we cannot say that such a universe began to exist and therefore the assumption stated in premise one of the cosmological argument does not apply to that universe. I haven't rejected causality.

(September 8, 2021 at 4:40 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: You objected before to the "something can't give/cause what it doesn't have", this rule seems to be, however, competely valid inside our universe (conservation of mass), and can be justified outside of it.

You have a habit of conflating multiple arguments. The argument you're replying to did not contain the "can't give" objection and it is irrelevant to that argument. I will, however, answer it as a courtesy.

First of all, we weren't talking about mass in the question and the law of conservation was not violated by my answer. Theists suggest that a supervenient reason can explain why a good god allows evil, but when the same is applied to a malevolent god, that for a supervenient reason it would allow good, you want to object. It's the same reason! That you use it when it's in your favor and object when it is not is rank hypocrisy. What I suggested violates the can't give what you haven't got maxim without violating the law of conservation.

(September 8, 2021 at 4:40 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: A cause of the universe can't be some inept entity, after all, it was at least capable of causing the entire universe with all what we know about it, including the marvelous arrangement of matter and natural laws. Since, from experience, we know we can't obtain an orderly machine or construction without hard work and a lot of willpower and determination, it seems plausible (more probable than not= its probability being true is >1/2) that a cause of the universe intended for these laws to happen. Attributing these laws to coincidence is not a solution, since coincidence already presupposes the existence of various objects that coincide with each other. A non-personal cause, if we were to apply the same rule in bold, can't yield personal agents.

You haven't shown that there is anything especially marvelous about the order of the universe. The problems with your analogy are twofold. First, the universe is not in any significant way like a machine, and so your analogy is as close to being useless as it can be. As Hume has stated the relevant point, insofar as the analogized is unlike that being compared, the analogy is weakened to the point of being incapable of carrying any argument.

The second problem is that we have explanations for the existence of humans that is wholly natural which would make machines simply a product of a long line of natural causes. If the point of your analogy is to suggest that like machines there is a wholly natural explanation for their origin then I wouldn't object, but we know you don't. Machines only make sense as an analogy if you postulate that some step in their creation didn't have a natural origin, but that would be begging the question.

As to presupposing that chance exists as a possible explanation, yes I am saying that. There is nothing objectionable about this because unless you have a deductive argument excluding chance then chance is at least a possible explanation. From there it is a matter of showing whether chance alone is a more probable explanation than the hypothesis of design, which contains many additional parts and assumptions. You'd need an extraordinarily compelling argument to overcome that difference, and you don't have one.

(September 8, 2021 at 4:40 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: The common defeater along the lines of "natural laws permit complexity to arise from simplicity" is not an issue at all, because natural laws are part of the fabric of the universe, they are descriptive, not prescriptive, they describe its inner workings. Simply put, complexity arising from simplicity is an instrument of the designer/the cause of the universe, it's evidently part of its effects. So, one can't explain away the designer/cause by referring to other parts of the same design/effect.

So you're assuming the universe is designed so that you can exclude arguments from chance which would defeat your argument, thus allowing you to conclude that the universe is designed? That has to be one of the most transparent examples of question-begging that I have ever seen. You don't get to assume your conclusion, you have to argue for it. And since you don't have a deductive argument for it, all your arguments will be inductive which means they implicitly allow for the possibility of other explanations. Honestly, does this type of logic even work on your children?

(September 8, 2021 at 4:40 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:

(September 8, 2021 at 3:49 pm)Angrboda Wrote: You're faced with a Catch-22 -- either God is not master and commander, or else his aseity prevents him from being demonstrated.  As a Muslim, you can't give up Allah's role as master and commander, nor can you demonstrate his existence if that is not required -- because then he isn't above nature in his own reality.

Even if we assume no deductive argument is conclusive, we can still infer God's existence based on what we see in the world. I see appearances of order, I marvel at God's omnipotence. I see instances of caregiving, I admire God's benevolence, etc.  Islam endorses the idea of the sensus divinitatis (Fitra'), that is, I am simply tilted toward teleology and assigning agency to things. I should simply listen to this innate sense.

Yes, but if those inferences are contradicted by reason, then you follow them at your peril. Neither you nor I believe that reason isn't superior to unreason.

(September 8, 2021 at 4:40 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:

(September 8, 2021 at 3:49 pm)Angrboda Wrote: You can't consider all universes together because other universes may not obey the same principles that this universe does.  They can only be considered collectively if they do.

We already considerd many very different things together when we labeled them a universe. If at least one universe of a collection of universes violates causality, then I completely agree, no further arguments can be made (and welcome to sophistry), if not, then they have the principle of causality as a common governing principle, and we can still consider regress arguments.

[/quote]

As noted above, I haven't dispensed with causality. Given that the cosmological argument relies upon the beginning to exist property to function, all universes must obey that property in order for them to be treated as one. You do not know if any predecessor universe has that property, so you can't group them together. End of story.

I love watching @Angrboda wipe the floor with bad arguments. She’s a tour de force.

(September 9, 2021 at 12:26 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: I love watching @Angrboda wipe the floor with bad arguments. She’s a tour de force.

Yup. I think we can confidently declare ‘Boda the winner of this thread.

Boru

(September 7, 2021 at 7:35 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Hey there,

When I first became interested in the questions of theology, God's existence, etc. I used to hold the atheist position in high regard, it looked like a very logical position to endorse when one isn't convinced of some particular account of God. I started to become highly suspicious of that when I discovered that all the big objections to theism simply fail miserably. 

A better way to show why these objections are really bad is to apply them to anything, to show that anything can't exist. So, let's rule out the existence of peanut butter;

Argument from the diversity of peanuts:

P1: There are many subspecies/types of peanuts. Each type has particular properties, a different taste, a different pod structure and variable seed sizes
P2: Peanut butter is so sweet that its sweetness should uniformly have the same miraculous taste for all mankind

C: peanut butter can't exist because it's incoherent

Argument from peanut evil :

P1: An ensnared fawn caught wildfire, the fawn is burned to death, it must have suffered heavily
P2: Something that tastes as sweet as peanut butter wouldn't let a fawn suffer, this food is too sweet to coexist with evil

C: peanut butter can't exist because of evil

Argument from peanut butter's hiddenness:

P1: Peanut butter isn't available in my local area.
P2: Peanut butter is so sweet that it wouldn't leave someone in my area who craves for it unsatisfied

C: peanut butter isn't that sweet after all

As you can see, these ridiculous arguments hardly differ from the objections we hear often aimed at undermining theism. Arguing from evil is by definition arguing from ignorance, when philosophers endorsing atheism became aware of that, they came up with an ad-hoc distinction between justified evil and unnecessary evil, which is, again, another fat fallacy of arguing from ignorance, because they can't prove that some instance of evil is unnecessary without begging the question. The issue of hiddenness is very similar because it presupposes that there can't be any good reason for God not directly revealing Himself to our senses. Finally, religious diversity is probably the most ridiculous of all three, simply because many conflicting accounts of the divine doesn't mean that they are all false, nor does it undermine any of God's properties.

All this simply means that atheology fails, whereas theology provides many compelling arguments/reasons to believe in God. Theism is the only acceptable worldview. QED.

Mental masturbation does not constitute scientific method, labs, control groups or peer review. 

Otherwise Mr Peanut is a real god and not just a corporate logo.

Theology is simply the idea of convincing others your mythology is more than mythology.

(September 9, 2021 at 12:50 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(September 7, 2021 at 7:35 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Hey there,

When I first became interested in the questions of theology, God's existence, etc. I used to hold the atheist position in high regard, it looked like a very logical position to endorse when one isn't convinced of some particular account of God. I started to become highly suspicious of that when I discovered that all the big objections to theism simply fail miserably. 

A better way to show why these objections are really bad is to apply them to anything, to show that anything can't exist. So, let's rule out the existence of peanut butter;

Argument from the diversity of peanuts:

P1: There are many subspecies/types of peanuts. Each type has particular properties, a different taste, a different pod structure and variable seed sizes
P2: Peanut butter is so sweet that its sweetness should uniformly have the same miraculous taste for all mankind

C: peanut butter can't exist because it's incoherent

Argument from peanut evil :

P1: An ensnared fawn caught wildfire, the fawn is burned to death, it must have suffered heavily
P2: Something that tastes as sweet as peanut butter wouldn't let a fawn suffer, this food is too sweet to coexist with evil

C: peanut butter can't exist because of evil

Argument from peanut butter's hiddenness:

P1: Peanut butter isn't available in my local area.
P2: Peanut butter is so sweet that it wouldn't leave someone in my area who craves for it unsatisfied

C: peanut butter isn't that sweet after all

As you can see, these ridiculous arguments hardly differ from the objections we hear often aimed at undermining theism. Arguing from evil is by definition arguing from ignorance, when philosophers endorsing atheism became aware of that, they came up with an ad-hoc distinction between justified evil and unnecessary evil, which is, again, another fat fallacy of arguing from ignorance, because they can't prove that some instance of evil is unnecessary without begging the question. The issue of hiddenness is very similar because it presupposes that there can't be any good reason for God not directly revealing Himself to our senses. Finally, religious diversity is probably the most ridiculous of all three, simply because many conflicting accounts of the divine doesn't mean that they are all false, nor does it undermine any of God's properties.

All this simply means that atheology fails, whereas theology provides many compelling arguments/reasons to believe in God. Theism is the only acceptable worldview. QED.

Mental masturbation does not constitute scientific method, labs, control groups or peer review. 

Otherwise Mr Peanut is a real god and not just a corporate logo.

Theology is simply the idea of convincing others your mythology is more than mythology.

This is not about scientific methodology (nor should it be). 

Boru

(September 8, 2021 at 11:47 am)Anomalocaris Wrote:

(September 8, 2021 at 11:33 am)Klorophyll Wrote: Look, you said that a disembodied being is non-existent. I am fine with you saying there no sufficient evidence, that it's not demonstrable,etc. But non-existence if a far stronger claim, if you can't prove it, I suggest you take it back, and wisely shut it.

I am saying it is as totally and complete indistinguishable from nonexistence as any arbitrary bullshit things any bullshitter ever cared to make up on the spur of amt moment, which is indeed the very maximally strong assertion of no existence as can ever be leveled at any notional thing whatsoever.

That such a maximally strong claim of no existence that can ever be leveled against anything can be leveled with complete assurance against your god shows what caliber of bullshit the notion of the existence of you god actually is.

Emphasis mine.  If you can't distinguish an undetectable entity from a nonexistent one, it's reasonable to treat the undetectable entity as if it were nonexistent.  If you can neither detect it with your senses nor with sophisticated equipment, if it has no perceptible effect on your reality and you can't communicate with it, it's a useless hypothetical being that for all intents and purposes exists only in your own imagination

(September 8, 2021 at 5:42 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Read what I wrote more carefully, dear bullshitter. A universe requires a cause, it can't just pop out of nothing. That's why the concept of God is necessary, it's because we care about rationality -unlike you, you think I am arbitrarily adding qualifiers to God to make it escape falsification. Well, no, you got it backwards: our position is that a deity is a necessary condition to existence, it's not an optional add-on. No god means no existence. No entity with sufficient qualifiers means no Anomalocaris.

Why in the world would you assume something as complicated as an intelligence would be required for anything else to exist?

Why cannot the universe itself 'simply exist' with no cause? That is, after all, what you are assuming about some deity.