(December 3, 2013 at 7:41 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: No I am not; I am making a reasonable inference about your position. I asked you to account for such laws consistently within your view of reality (materialism). Every attempt you have put forth has involved a creator or creative agent, so I am assuming that you cannot account for such laws without invoking a creative agent. You could always prove me wrong by actually accounting for such laws in a manner that is consistent with your materialism. However, I suspect that if you could actually do so you would have by now.
I did a couple pages back, with Floontium the eternal material. This actually plays into my main point, which is that you can make up any damn thing you want. Handwaving and just-so stories do not reality make.
Quote:Easy, logical contradictions cannot exist and such events in the future would lead to logical contradictions. I also know that there will never be any married bachelors, round squares, or odd numbers divisible by 2 in the future either.
And just what is contradictory about the idea that the laws of nature can be changed, especially since it's the cornerstone of both your creation account and miracle claims? Don't just assert things, Stat: demonstrate them. Fact is, we
already have the technological means to alter or discard some laws of nature; a plane falling at a certain speed will temporarily counteract gravity, for one. You're just applying whatever labels you want to things, in the hopes that your assertions will just be accepted without question.
Quote:No, an argument from ignorance can work either direction. However, as you will see your position leads to logical absurdities. Given my logic we can make the following statements…
-Pigs cannot fly because we have never seen a pig fly
-Materialism cannot account for the laws of nature because no materialist has done so yet.
Classic argument from ignorance for Stat.
Quote:Given your logic you’d have to argue…
-Pigs can fly, we just have not seen one do it yet.
-Materialism can account for the laws of nature -we just have not seen a materialist do so yet.
Uh, no. Again, your only argument is to warp mine out of recognition: an actually accurate version of that would simply run "we have not seen a materialist account for the laws of nature yet." There's no need to go further than that, or to attach a definite label
at all, because- and this may come as a shock to you, Stat-
your experience of the world is not all that there is to reality. This "I haven't seen it, and therefore it cannot possibly exist at any point," attitude of yours is childish, reminiscent of a baby's object impermanence, and I will not take part in it.
Quote:Clearly my position is the only rational position here.]/quote]
Sure, if the only thing you're willing to entertain is your misrepresentation of my position.
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And as I have pointed out like seven times now, your time travel argument did not actually account for the laws of nature because it violated the law of non-contradiction and was also guilty of a category error.
Which misses the point entirely,
again. 
Quote:You still have to deal with the fact that your view of reality cannot even account for such things. This is nothing short of a fatal flaw in the materialistic conceptual scheme.
Until you can demonstrate that your account of things has any basis in reality, all you have is a just so story. A fairytale.
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Where did I say anything about magic? It does give my position more credibility because my view of reality makes more sense of actual reality than yours does.
Because magic (miracles, godpowers, whatever you want to call it) can be used to explain anything. Doesn't mean it's real.
Quote:It means everything because it is the only conceptual scheme that can account for such things in a logically consistent manner. You assert that there are dozens of other conceptual schemes that account for such things but you have yet to actually present any. Couple that with the fact that your conceptual scheme cannot account for such things and you have got serious problems.
Every other god accounts for it all just as well as yours does. Made up gods do too. My time travel one does as well, regardless of your by fiat assertion that it can't because you don't find it compelling. Floontium accounts for it all perfectly well. Metaverse and multiverse theory does a perfectly fine job of it without a creator. There's plenty of other accounts that work just as well, and to be clear, the laws of nature only need to be accounted for in a creationist worldview; in a naturalist one, it's perfectly fine to say that they just worked out this way, that the process was unguided, possibly random or the result of a cascading series of consequences, because in a world without a god, there was no goal involved. It just shook out this way, and that's not a problem, because it's exactly what we'd expect.
There: I just accounted for the laws of nature under materialism, at least as a possibility.
Quote:No, you are adhering to your position upon blind faith hoping the evidence comes in. I prefer the view of reality that is already supported by the evidence. How ironic is this? The atheist is now appealing to blind faith and the theist is appealing to the evidence.
Don't presume to tell me what I think, Statler.
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If you only believe in that which is demonstrable then demonstrate where the laws of nature came from and how they are upheld.
Only when you demonstrate where your god came from. Besides, I already noted that up above.
Quote:Sure I can, logical contradictions are not possible (even in the future). The fact you have to resort to such irrationality to defend your position demonstrates that your position is logically indefensible.
And calling something a logical contradiction without demonstrating why is just another meaningless assertion. How boring.
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God’s creation of the laws of nature does not violate the law of non-contradiction (unlike your time travel example).
How do you know mine does? I'm interested in how you know the future of all human technology and discovery, Stat.
Quote:I’d prefer to keep the discussion on topic and continue holding your feet to the flames. We are discussing how my view of reality can account for the laws of nature and yours cannot.
We are discussing that, yes: and as usual, you are profoundly wrong at every turn, surviving only on the same smug back patting I called Chad on earlier.
Quote:You have evidence demonstrating that the laws of nature arose and are upheld through purely material and natural means? By all means then, please present it!
Where's the evidence that a god was involved? Because, you know, that would be the justification for believing that anything other than natural processes were involved; see, nature has an advantage, in that it's demonstrable already. How can you demonstrate your god?
Quote:Where did I make merely an assertion? If my assertion that my view of reality can account for the laws of nature and yours cannot is in error then by all means show me how. Thus far, the fact that you are allowing it to stand unrefuted is rather telling.
You assertion was that my time travel scenario was irrational. You haven't demonstrated that, or explained why, you've just said it, and then proceeded under the idea that we've all accepted that as fact. Again, what you think, just because you think it, means nothing to me, until you can show it. So far, all you've done is said "nuh uh!" and then chastised me for not refuting that. So far, there's been no objection to respond to.
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Tread lightly; you’re only supposed to use the quote functions if you are accurately quoting a poster. I never said anything about magic so you have yet to actually address my position.
No, me saying magic is to make fun of you, but I think we all know what miraculous thing I'm referring to.
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No no no! According to you this is a fallacious argument from ignorance. Magic does exist, we will simply discover this in the future just like we will discover in the future that your position actually can account for natural laws.
And again, you resort to a strawman. My position is that one ought not to categorically rule out the existence of a thing based solely on what we know now: we are wise to recognize that we don't yet know everything. Similarly, we are also unjustified in believing in something- like gods- without evidence for it. This is a special trick that rational people can do, called "keeping an open mind."
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Have you not been paying attention? My position is proven correct through logical negation. The logical negation of my position (your position) cannot make sense of reality.
So, even if that wasn't an argument from ignorance all over, you've just asserted that mine is wrong, again. You are acting like a toddler, Stat.
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You’re wrong again. I do know, because He who created the laws of nature and who is upholding them has revealed to us that they will stay uniform in the future (Genesis 8). This is just another example of how the Christian view of reality and only the Christian view of reality can actually make sense of what we all believe to be the case.
If you can't show it, you don't know it, Stat.
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Thus far the only one of the two of us who seems to be ignorant of the answers is you.
Seriously? "No, you are!"?
Quote:Refute what? You have not provided anything.
My time travel scenario, to which your only response so far is to proclaim it illogical, as if merely saying so makes it so.
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If Floontium is made of material then it is subject to the same natural laws that all other materials are subject to; so you did not account for anything because your explanation requires that natural laws exist in order for itself to exist.
So, fallacy detection: "material things cannot alter natural laws," is an argument from ignorance, aside from being flatly wrong (black holes are made of material things, initially.)
Second of all, you're ignorant of Floontium: it's capable of suspending and generating natural laws. That's where they come from. They're stable because only Floontium can generate new ones, and all the Floontium in the universe has been expended in creating the initial set.
Quote:Sure I do. An argument from ignorance is arguing that something is true simply because it has not been proven false (or vice versa). You love using them.
I have not once used them, mainly because I have not once even proclaimed anything as true, without being tongue in cheek about them. Don't mistake your inability to comprehend my position as some kind of fallacious argument, Stat.
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