(February 26, 2015 at 5:00 pm)Esquilax Wrote: ...you're fond of constructing arguments with hidden premises, the one here being that intentions require some extra, external force to match actions.

All I was saying is that epiphenomenalism is a very well established dilemma for those who opt for pre-established harmony. No hidden premise.

(February 26, 2015 at 4:26 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Final cause is always at play because there are no undirected actions;… I supported this statement earlier in the post by referring to an empirically verifiable fact. That fact is this: barring any impeding circumstances, particular efficient causes always produce the same specific ends. It is not necessary to show that it is possible to be otherwise, since this is not speculation, but an observation of how things work in reality.

It would seem that you are burying the problem of induction underneath a metaphysical assumption here. The alleged fact isn't empirically verifiable because the problem of induction greets you at its root. What's left seems little more than metaphysical uniformitarianism, which could equally as well be lifted from this context to undermine the whole basis of belief in final causes. At least that's how it appears to me. Granted I don't know much about Aristotle and Aquinas, but I don't see how this assertion is justified.

(February 26, 2015 at 4:26 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Is it your hope to remove intention entirely so that we can go about our lives like spring driven toys?

When physicists discovered that solid objects are composed of mostly empty space, did you accuse them of fear-mongering because people would be afraid to step out of bed and fall through the floor?

Understanding how the world works makes us wiser and better informed in our moral decisions. Please tell me how your life would be immediately be transformed if you came to believe that matter--and specifically you in this case---is composed of parts that were once very different constituents in the surrounding environment and now due to changes entirely beyond your control, they continue to be pushed and pulled as before but with the added causal influence of this incredible emergent phenomenon that is self-aware (like your imagined deity) called conceptual thought.

Maybe you should put down the Aristotle a bit and pick up Epicurus.

(February 26, 2015 at 5:50 pm)rasetsu Wrote: It would seem that you are burying the problem of induction underneath a metaphysical assumption here. The alleged fact isn't empirically verifiable because the problem of induction greets you at its root.

I think that is a fair critique. My approach is based on the idea that all knowledge comes from reason applied to experience. Absent experience, such as the universal constancy of causal relationships, people would have no content on which to apply reason.

(February 26, 2015 at 5:50 pm)rasetsu Wrote: What's left seems little more than metaphysical uniformitarianism, which could equally as well be lifted from this context to undermine the whole basis of belief in final causes.

The presumption that I actually do make is that we occupy an intelligible reality. I suppose you could deny, or at least question, the universal applicability of natural laws. That position comes at high cost: an absurd universe. Acceptance of final cause seems like a relatively small price to pay for a rational universe in which real knowledge is possible.

I don't understand how anything of this is relevant to the OP: the issue of who the necessary being is if even a "who" at all. The OP is not about whether or not cosmological arguments and design arguments work to show a type of necessary being, but how they fail to tell us which "being." How they fail to prove any religious view and how secular theism would be preferable. I'd like to get back on this topic.

What exactly is secular theism? Besides how can you debate the relative merits of opposing views about the attributes of a necessary being without taking that as a given. It seems to me that if you want to get on with the debate you want, then you must call on the nihilists to stop their silly and anti-science objections.

Are you trolling me? I don't know anymore. You know what the words secular and theism mean dumbass. Fuck off!

It just seems like an oxymoron to me. Theism looks at things based on their belief in a reality that includes God. Secularists look at things independent of any reference to God.

Person who believes at least one God exists, but disbelieves religions.
I don't understand why is so hard to understand. I'll just use the word nonreligious if the word secular is confusing.

(February 26, 2015 at 9:41 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: It just seems like an oxymoron to me. Theism looks at things based on their belief in a reality that includes God. Secularists look at things independent of any reference to God.

Which is why your views continue to run into objections. Reality with God requires assumptions, same for reality without. You stated that two posts ago. We view the assumptions of supernatural entities to be an illogical requirement in understanding the world. We both trust our sense perception, and that is a necessary assumption in understanding anything. In fact, that alone has been enough to create the means for this conversation and everything else that you depend on in your day-to-day. When you add the assumption of a supernatural audience to this conversation, given that you share the dependence on sensory data, and all conclusions regarding sensory data have materialistic explanations, why would you expect Atheists to respond any differently when you log-on, and begin to posit an unprovable supernatural entity to be responsible for all of it, and the only exception you plea for is that your claims be immune to sensory evidence. You are every bit deserving of the criticisms you've received so far, and I think you know it. You're barking up a tree on an island that doesn't inhabit things worth barking at.