(May 8, 2014 at 10:26 pm)Avodaiah Wrote: Do tell.

You are claiming any other alternative is impossible on the presupposition that something outside time already exists.

First you must show evidence for something outside of time as existing. Then you can claim that it had a hand in creation.

Otherwise, your impossible alternatives statement is as fallacious as any gap of knowledge claim.

(May 8, 2014 at 10:18 pm)Avodaiah Wrote:

(May 8, 2014 at 10:10 pm)whateverist Wrote: How can you say a creator brought everything into existence without changing itself? How do you know that "existing outside of time" is a thing which any noun can possess? How do you know you aren't just saying weird things which mean nothing?

You're asking how I can say it's possible? Because any other alternative is impossible.
How can we know that this universe contained in these 3 spatial dimension and 1 time dimension (plus the 7 or so others proposed by physicists) are all there is if what we have here points to something outside of them?

So do you find in general that the best way to decide empirical questions comes down to considerations of logic? I don't think the cosmos gives a fig what our human logic finds necessary.

(May 8, 2014 at 10:18 pm)Avodaiah Wrote:

(May 8, 2014 at 10:10 pm)whateverist Wrote: How can you say a creator brought everything into existence without changing itself? How do you know that "existing outside of time" is a thing which any noun can possess? How do you know you aren't just saying weird things which mean nothing?

You're asking how I can say it's possible? Because any other alternative is impossible.

Do you mean it must be possible because you are not capable of imagining any other alternative?

(May 8, 2014 at 9:30 pm)Avodaiah Wrote: So a while back, I started a thread defending the Kalam argument. Eventually I got pretty busy and ended up letting the thread expire, but it ended up being mostly about the difference between making a bare assertion and stating a self-evident truth.

Let's see if I can't simplify this for you:

In order for something to be self evident, it needs to be evident, which means you need evidence that demonstrates it to be true. When it comes to universal origins, you don't have that, because you have exactly one universe at your disposal, and an extremely limited understanding of its past, to the point where your brain literally may not be evolved to think in terms applicable to its beginning. That's not a slight on you, we're all in the same boat there.

The difference is that science stops at that point, admits that we don't know exactly how all this works, lists what evidence we do have and pledges to find more. You, on the other hand, claim to know certain things based on logic that we already know may not apply past a certain point, and your only defense of this is that it's self evident to you, while you're using an intuitive understanding of the universe as it is now, when we know for a fact that the universe back then was remarkably different.

That's the problem, and that's why claims of things being self evident are lazy shortcuts; you simply do not have enough of anything to make a claim like that here.

(May 8, 2014 at 9:30 pm)Avodaiah Wrote: So a while back, I started a thread defending the Kalam argument. Eventually I got pretty busy and ended up letting the thread expire, but it ended up being mostly about the difference between making a bare assertion and stating a self-evident truth.
The Kalam does presuppose a couple things. It presupposes that nothing can never equal something (which is why everything that has a beginning has a cause) and that anything that moves has a starting point and an ending point (why everything in the universe must have a beginning).
These are not scientific laws, brought about by testing things time and time again and getting a consistent answer. These are mathematical and logical laws, laws that we know because it would be completely impossible for them to be any other way, and the kind of truths that the scientific method itself is based on. If nothing can equal something, then what's the point of looking for a cause for natural phenomena? They could just happen randomly for no reason. Or if motion does not require a starting and ending point, then why would anyone want to know how the history of anything, or how something was before it changed in some way? The fact is that these questions only make any sense because of self-evident truth, which is what a lot of arguments, including the Kalam, are based on.
Can we not agree on this?

I would suggest you look into quantum physics, and things appear from nothing and disappear into nothing all the time.

Why do people find saying "I don't know" to be so painful that they would resort to inventing ridiculous stories and claim them as fact?

What caused the universe?

The only way to answer this question honestly is to say that you do not know.

(May 8, 2014 at 9:30 pm)Avodaiah Wrote: So a while back, I started a thread defending the Kalam argument. Eventually I got pretty busy and ended up letting the thread expire, but it ended up being mostly about the difference between making a bare assertion and stating a self-evident truth.

I doubt you know what an actual self-evident truth is in philosophy, but we'll see.

Quote:The Kalam does presuppose a couple things. It presupposes that nothing can never equal something (which is why everything that has a beginning has a cause)

..,No. The Kalam presupposes (among other things):

1) The A-theory of time
2) That there cannot be actual infinities
3) Something cannot come from nothing

The reason Kalam proposes "that which begins to exist, has a cause for its existence" is because of assumptions 2) and 3).

Quote:and that anything that moves has a starting point and an ending point (why everything in the universe must have a beginning).

Again, no for the reasons above. Alsom you're confusing Kalam, which is a cosmological style argument, with Prime Mover arguments.

Quote:These are not scientific laws, brought about by testing things time and time again and getting a consistent answer.

Uh, YES THEY ARE. Repeated experience of things having causes for their existence is why apologists find Kalam's 1st premise indubitable. Further, Kalam's 2nd premise IS based on science COMPLETELY. It's debatable, but to say it's not an premise whose attempted justification isn't from science is flat-out false.

Quote:These are mathematical and logical laws, laws that we know because it would be completely impossible for them to be any other way, and the kind of truths that the scientific method itself is based on.

Firstly, Kalam is making metaphysical assumptions, not strictly logical or mathematical ones.
Secondly, the claim that it is "completely impossible" for things to come into existence without a cause in any possible world is a whopper of a philosophical overplaying of your hand. Pray tell how you know it's impossible?

Quote:If nothing can equal something, then what's the point of looking for a cause for natural phenomena? They could just happen randomly for no reason.

Okay, you can't even make your own points properly, and you're - AGAIN - confusing two different argument styles. Firstly, Kalam does not presuppose "nothing can equal something". That is a clearly either violation of the Law of Identity, or you're equivocating "nothing" with a kind of thing.

Secondly, you're now confusing Kalam (a cosmological type argument) with arguments from contingency, which all rely on question-begging by their assumption of the ontological truth of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Thirdly, the reason we look for causes is because we live in states of affairs that have causes for effects. But to extrapolate that to the entire universe by such a chain of reasoning results in a composition fallacy.

Quote:Or if motion does not require a starting and ending point, then why would anyone want to know how the history of anything, or how something was before it changed in some way?

Because we're interested in it? Nor would a beginning of motion even imply God. Under the B-theory of time, there is a first "moment" of time, but the universe remains eternal because there never was a time when the universe didn't exist, since time and space are properties of the universe.

Quote:The fact is that these questions only make any sense because of self-evident truth, which is what a lot of arguments, including the Kalam, are based on.
Can we not agree on this?

No, and we finally come full circle: You don't understand what a self-evident truth is. Nothing about the Kalam has anything to do with self-evident truths. Self-evident truths would be something like the Law of Identity (A is A), i.e something that must be true, even for it to be considered false. So if I said the following:

"The Law of Identity is false."

I first assume the Law of Identity by declaring the Law of Identity. That is, I'm implicitly saying "The Law of Identity is the Law of Identity", and then I'm saying it's false, and hence create a contradiction.
THAT is a self-evident truth.

Go back to jerking off to William Lane Craig in a speedo. :p

(May 8, 2014 at 9:30 pm)Avodaiah Wrote: So a while back, I started a thread defending the Kalam argument. Eventually I got pretty busy and ended up letting the thread expire, but it ended up being mostly about the difference between making a bare assertion and stating a self-evident truth.
The Kalam does presuppose a couple things. It presupposes that nothing can never equal something (which is why everything that has a beginning has a cause) and that anything that moves has a starting point and an ending point (why everything in the universe must have a beginning).
These are not scientific laws, brought about by testing things time and time again and getting a consistent answer. These are mathematical and logical laws, laws that we know because it would be completely impossible for them to be any other way, and the kind of truths that the scientific method itself is based on. If nothing can equal something, then what's the point of looking for a cause for natural phenomena? They could just happen randomly for no reason. Or if motion does not require a starting and ending point, then why would anyone want to know how the history of anything, or how something was before it changed in some way? The fact is that these questions only make any sense because of self-evident truth, which is what a lot of arguments, including the Kalam, are based on.
Can we not agree on this?

On earth, within the space/time continuum, yes, probably.

Outside of our limited world, however, logic breaks down. Things do not work as we would expect them to. Particles and sub-particles do, indeed appear to come from nothing all the time.

There are now many examples from physics of things that appear to be completely against our logic. Simply consider Einstein's equations and their conclusions. The faster you go, the slower time goes. WTF? How does time know how fast I'm going? Doesn't make any sense.

If a train goes past me at 50 miles per hour and I am stationary the train is travelling at 50 mph relative to me. If I am travelling at 30 mph in the same direction the train appears to be travelling at 20 mph relative to me.

With light, however, it doesn't matter how fast I am travelling light always appears to be travelling at the same speed.

Where's the sense in the that? How is that logical?

What you are doing is assuming everything works the same as it does here everywhere else. It doesn't.

Its like saying what goes up must come down. Throw a ball in the air and watch it land back on earth. Go into space, however, and throw the same ball and you will never see it again.

Given that at least one of the theories regarding the origin of the universe states that the initial objects that started the process, would have mutually annihilated each other doing so your assertion that; "any alternative is impossible" is false.
The best part is that you alluded to precisely this hypothesis earlier in the thread...

(May 9, 2014 at 12:21 am)Losty Wrote: Why do people find saying "I don't know" to be so painful that they would resort to inventing ridiculous stories and claim them as fact?

What caused the universe?

The only way to answer this question honestly is to say that you do not know.

Human nature. Look at the Greeks, or other significantly advanced historical societies, who were able to work out facts about the world that still hold true today, but when it came to things they couldn't explain, they started confabulating.

---

(May 8, 2014 at 11:55 pm)eyemixer Wrote:

(May 8, 2014 at 10:18 pm)Avodaiah Wrote: You're asking how I can say it's possible? Because any other alternative is impossible.

Do you mean it must be possible because you are not capable of imagining any other alternative?

This is the same problem with "logical necessity," in that it's circular question-begging logic. Necessity and self-evidence would only make sense in a theoretical world where all possible evidence had already been gathered.