Disproving Odin - An Experiment in arguing with a theist with Theist logic

[Jenny A]

This is really getting old. This is like to 9th time I have explained this in this thread and like three times to you. 

Plain and simple: Reasoning gives us that some sort of causal principle is an objective feature of all reality. Not everything has a material cause (even within the universe). Everything has a sufficient cause (seems to be the bare basic level of cause). The universe is something. It must have at the very least a bare basic cause (sufficient cause). Want the fuller explanation? address my answer to you in  https://atheistforums.org/post-1717655.html#pid1717655

* * *

There is no category error because only you are limiting the premise to be material things. There are a large number of things that do no have material causes:

1. The thing that makes you "you".
2. Mathematical objects.
3. Ideas, novels, and symphonies
4. Language
5. Classes, properties, descriptions

Lest you forget what a material cause is, it is the thing of which an objects is made. 

This whole argument stems from the same issue I brought up above:

A lot of internet atheist go wrong here and I think it stems from a complete lack of philosophical training. They cannot differentiate between scientific descriptions and concepts that are clearly not science. It is logical positivism/scientism but, ironically, they cannot identify their mistake because they have no philosophical training. Since they cannot identify that component in their worldview, they don't know that it has been dismissed by nearly everyone for more that 50 years. So, it lives on.

I'm sure you are frustrated.  You have at least two category errors.  Whenever this is pointed out to you, you return to the Aristitileon categories of cause which are at least in part the cause of your category error.

1. What Do You Mean By Exist?

The first catagory error is equating the existence of physical objects, energy, with the existence of ideas. These are two very different meanings of the word "exist."  To see how different they are, all you have to do is ask where does it exist?  Physical objects have an identifiable location.  Where is my pencil, or where's the dog  are rational questions. Where is the English language? Where is The Pythagorean Theorem?   Or where is Beethoven's Fifth are not.  At best you might say Engish is spoken in these places, or Pythagoras's  Theorim is set out in my math book, or my score of the Fifth is over there on the desk.  But that's only physical places where the ideas are recorded.  They don't exist except as recorded in a brain or someother physical object.  In the sense that your pencil exists, ideas don't exist at all.  It's as if instead of asking for a pencil, you asked for pencilness.

The trouble with talking about the existense of ideas goes beyond the fact that they must be recorded.  To exist they must also be understood by someone.  Consider for example the possibility that if DNA were taken to represent a letter system in Hitite, English, or some language not yet spoken but which will be spoken in the future, that a sequence of DNA somewhere would spell out an intelligible sentence, maybe even a poetic one, such "eyes like liquid fire."   Would you say that that poem existed before someone worked out the "meaning" of that sequence? I wouldn't.  But I would have no trouble saying that the DNA sequence itself existed whether someone sequenced it or not.

The universe potentially poses a third kind of existence.  Where is the universe?  Well, unless there is something outside it, the answer is it's not in a place, it is the collective of all places and things. When we ask where, we are asking where in the universe?  To ask where is the universe is an as odd a question as where is the Pythagorean Theorem.  But unlike the theorem, the universe obviously  has  a physical existence and it's existence is not contingent on someone's knowing about it.

These two or three uses of the word exist are so different that using the word existence to mean both the existence of physical objects and the existence of ideas is a category error.

2.  What Do You Mean By Begin to Exist?

Here's where the multiple meanings of the word exist begin to create real havoc.  You and Craig insist that elephants don't appear out of nothing.  This is because elephants, have, as Aristotle would say, a material cause, i.e. they are made of something.  All physical objects are.  It's not the creation of an elephant that's  startling, it's the creation of the matter out of which the elephant is made. Elephants made out of material not previously existing in the universe would indeed be unprecedented.

This is because all physical objects have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense of the word, that is to say they are made of something.  And when we say something begins to be an elephant we mean that the matter out of which the elephant is made took the form of an elephant.  We don't mean new matter popped into existence and became an elephant.

The universe,  is physical in that it is made of material, meaning that in the Aristitileon sense, it has a material cause.  But you state that unlike the matter that makes up an elephant, the matter that makes up the universe did not exist prior to the universe.  That is an entirely different meaning of to begin to exist.  It is in fact the very kind of beginning to exist that you keep telling me elephants do not ever do.  And  also the very kind of begin to exist appears to occur at the  subatomic level which you say does not actually happen because it is too improbable.

Ideas on the other hand have no material cause in the Aristotelian sense.  That is to say that they have no material substance in that they are not made of anything only recorded in things.  You don't propose that a poem won't suddenly appear in my backyard because poems don't appear anywhere at all.  Poems  don't exist the way elephants do. But even though a poem is not made of something physical, it is created by something physical.  A poem not conceived or recognised by a brain (including artificial brains like computers) would simply not be in any sense of the word to exist.  It comes into being when it is recognized by someone as a poem.

So, just as you have conflated multiple meanings of exist, you have gone on to conflate multiple meanings of of the phrase "begin to exist."

3. What Do You Mean By Cause?

Not surprisingly using  multiple meanings for exist, and begin to exist leads to multiple kinds of causes for existence.  This is exacerbated by your insistence on using Aristotle's categorisation of causes as the be all end all way to describe cause.  

Aristotle predates Newton by a millennium. Of his terms, formal cause has long since been abandoned. We no longer say that an octave is caused by a 2:1 ratio.  Rather we say that the 2:1 ratio describes the octave.  Ratios do not cause anything.  They do describe the relationship between things.  And although we speak of the purpose for things we no longer talk about a ball having a purpose of getting to the bottom of a ramp. End purpose is only relevant to things created by a sentient being for a purpose.  An extraordinarily small portion of the present shape of things in the universe was formed for a purpose even though most of the objects used by humans were formed by humans for a pupose. Purpose is an attribute assigned by people, an idea attached to the object as it were.

So, with regard to the types of beginning to exist discussed above, we know all physical objects in the universe which like an elephant are created out existing matter have a material cause (it's definitional). Physical objects at the human scale also have what Aristotle called an agency cause, or a sufficient cause, tellingly, also called a moving cause.  That is to say, an elephant is in it's particular place and in it's particular shape because of forces outside of itself.  In the case of physical objects, like an  elephant or a ball, or a mountain those outside forces are physical forces acting on the physical material that makes up the object. And really it's not a cause  but a myriad of material and moving causes.  

This does not necessarily hold true at the subatomic level where, while everything still is made of something, some particles appear not to be made from preexisting material.  And they appear to move without outside force.  If they have a cause, it's a very different meaning than the cause we mean when we look for the cause of an elephant. It's not even clear if cause is a relevant term. You could say they have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense but that isn't really more that stating that they physically exist.

If, as you profess, the universe is not made of preexisting material and consists of matter that wasn't previously something else, then it too does not have cause in the way an elephant does.  What kind of cause is it that makes objects appear out of nothing?

Ideas have no material cause in the Aristitileon sense as they are not made of anything.  They have no moving cause either as they have on material to be acted upon by outside forces.  Yet to the extent they can be said to exist, it is only because they can be recorded in physical objects and understood by physical beings.  They created and maintained by thought.  I suppose you could say they have an end cause.  But they also have a physical cause in that they are created by physical activity in  brains and communicated by physical means.

4. Innapropriately Conflating Different Of Meanings With A Single Term is Category Error.

You have at least two different meanings of exist, at least two meanings of begin to exist, and many meanings of cause used in you proposition.  Saying l mean all of those doesn't solve the category error.

If I say

All pets pant,
Goldfish are pets
Therefore goldfish pant

The problem is not solved by saying pets includes both dogs and goldfish, and panting includes all forms of breathing whether by mouth or by gills.  When talking about categories animals for purposes of animal physiology pets in an inherently bad category.  And using pant when what you mean is breath, is disingenuous.

The difference between physically existing and the existence of ideas; the difference between the creation of new matter and reforming of existing matter; and the difference between reshaping matter, having ideas and making new matter appear; are too dissimilar to be usefully refered to by the same names in formal proofs.

[Edited for many but probably far from all typos.]

[polymath257]

This is really getting old. This is like to 9th time I have explained this in this thread and like three times to you. 

Plain and simple: Reasoning gives us that some sort of causal principle is an objective feature of all reality. Not everything has a material cause (even within the universe). Everything has a sufficient cause (seems to be the bare basic level of cause). The universe is something. It must have at the very least a bare basic cause (sufficient cause). Want the fuller explanation? address my answer to you in  https://atheistforums.org/post-1717655.html#pid1717655

* * *

There is no category error because only you are limiting the premise to be material things. There are a large number of things that do no have material causes:

1. The thing that makes you "you".
2. Mathematical objects.
3. Ideas, novels, and symphonies
4. Language
5. Classes, properties, descriptions

Lest you forget what a material cause is, it is the thing of which an objects is made. 

This whole argument stems from the same issue I brought up above:

A lot of internet atheist go wrong here and I think it stems from a complete lack of philosophical training. They cannot differentiate between scientific descriptions and concepts that are clearly not science. It is logical positivism/scientism but, ironically, they cannot identify their mistake because they have no philosophical training. Since they cannot identify that component in their worldview, they don't know that it has been dismissed by nearly everyone for more that 50 years. So, it lives on.

I'm sure you are frustrated.  You have at least two category errors.  Whenever this is pointed out to you, you return to the Aristitileon categories of cause which are at least in part the cause of your category error.

1. What Do You Mean By Exist?

The first catagory error is equating the existence of physical objects, energy, with the existence of ideas. These are two very different meanings of the word "exist."  To see how different they are, all you have to do is ask where does it exist?  Physical objects have an identifiable location.  Where is my pencil, or where's the dog  are rational questions. Where is the English language? Where is The Pythagorean Theorem?   Or where is Beethoven's Fifth are not.  At best you might say Engish is spoken in these places, or Pythagoras's  Theorim is set out in my math book, or my score of the Fifth is over there on the desk.  But that's only physical places where the ideas are recorded.  They don't exist except as recorded in a brain or someother physical object.  In the sense that your pencil exists, ideas don't exist at all.  It's as if instead of asking for a pencil, you asked for pencilness.

The trouble with talking about the existense of ideas goes beyond the fact that they must be recorded.  To exist they must also be understood by someone.  Consider for example the possibility that if DNA were taken to represent a letter system in Hitite, English, or some language not yet spoken but which will be spoken in the future, that a sequence of DNA somewhere would spell out an intelligible sentence, maybe even a poetic one, such "eyes like liquid fire."   Would you say that that poem existed before someone worked out the "meaning" of that sequence? I wouldn't.  But I would have no trouble saying that the DNA sequence itself existed whether someone sequenced it or not.

The universe potentially poses a third kind of existence.  Where is the universe?  Well, unless there is something outside it, the answer is it's not in a place, it is the collective of all places and things. When we ask where, we are asking where in the universe?  To ask where is the universe is an as odd a question as where is the Pythagorean Theorem.  But unlike the theorem, the universe obviously  has  a physical existence and it's existence is not contingent on someone's knowing about it.

These two or three uses of the word exist are so different that using the word existence to mean both the existence of physical objects and the existence of ideas is a category error.

2.  What Do You Mean By Begin to Exist?

Here's where the multiple meanings of the word exist begin to create real havoc.  You and Craig insist that elephants don't appear out of nothing.  This is because elephants, have, as Aristotle would say, a material cause, i.e. they are made of something.  All physical objects are.  It's not the creation of an elephant that's  startling, it's the creation of the matter out of which the elephant is made. Elephants made out of material not previously existing in the universe would indeed be unprecedented.

This is because all physical objects have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense of the word, that is to say they are made of something.  And when we say something begins to be an elephant we mean that the matter out of which the elephant is made took the form of an elephant.  We don't mean new matter popped into existence and became an elephant.

The universe,  is physical in that it is made of material, meaning that in the Aristitileon sense, it has a material cause.  But you state that unlike the matter that makes up an elephant, the matter that makes up the universe did not exist prior to the universe.  That is an entirely different meaning of to begin to exist.  It is in fact the very kind of beginning to exist that you keep telling me elephants do not ever do.  And  also the very kind of begin to exist appears to occur at the  subatomic level which you say does not actually happen because it is too improbable.

Ideas on the other hand have no material cause in the Aristotelian sense.  That is to say that they have no material substance in that they are not made of anything only recorded in things.  You don't propose that a poem won't suddenly appear in my backyard because poems don't appear anywhere at all.  Poems  don't exist the way elephants do. But even though a poem is not made of something physical, it is created by something physical.  A poem not conceived or recognised by a brain (including artificial brains like computers) would simply not be in any sense of the word to exist.  It comes into being when it is recognized by someone as a poem.

So, just as you have conflated multiple meanings of exist, you have gone on to conflate multiple meanings of  of the phrase "begin to exist."

3. What Do You Mean By Cause?

Not surprisingly using  multiple meanings for exist, and begin to exist leads to multiple kinds of causes for existence.  This is exacerbated by your insistence on using Aristotle's categorisation of causes as the be all end all way to describe cause.  

Aristotle predates Newton by a millennium. Of his terms, formal cause has long since been abandoned. We no longer say that an octave is caused by a 2:1 ratio.  Rather we say that the 2:1 ratio describes the octave.  Ratios do not cause anything.  They do describe the relationship between things.  And although we speak of the purpose for things we no longer talk about a ball having a purpose of getting to the bottom of a ramp. End purpose is only relevant to things created by a sentient being for a purpose.  An extraordinarily small portion of the present shape of things in the universe was formed for a purpose even though most of the objects used by humans were formed by humans for a pupose.  Purpose is an attribute assigned by people, an idea attached to the object as it were.

So, with regard to the types of beginning to exist discussed above, we know all physical objects in the universe which like an elephant are created out existing matter have a material cause (it's definitional). Physical objects at the human scale also have what Aristotle called an agency cause, or a sufficient cause, tellingly, also called a moving cause.  That is to say, an elephant is in it's particular place and in it's particular shape because of forces outside of itself.  In the case of physical objects, like an  elephant or a ball, or a mountain those outside forces are physical forces acting on the physical material that makes up the object. And really it's not a cause  but a myriad of material and moving causes.  

This does not necessarily hold true at the subatomic level where, while everything still is made of something, some particles appear not to be made from preexisting material.  And they appear to move without outside force.  If they have a cause, it's a very different meaning than the cause we mean when we look for the cause of an elephant. It's not even clear if cause is a relevant term.  You could say they have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense but that isn't really more that stating that they physically exist.

If, as you profess, the universe is not made of preexisting material and consists of matter that wasn't previously something else, then it too does not have cause in the way an elephant does.  What kind of cause is it that makes objects appear out of nothing?  

Ideas have no material cause in the Aristitileon sense as they are not made of anything.  They have no moving cause either as they have on material to be acted upon by outside forces.  Yet to the extent they can be said to exist, it is only because they can be recorded in physical objects and understood by physical beings.  They created and maintained by thought.  I suppose you could say they have an end cause.  But they also have a physical cause in that they are created by physical activity in  brains and communicated by physical means.

4. Innapropriately Conflating Different Of Meanings With A Single Term is Category Error.

You have at least two different meanings of exist, at least two meanings of begin to exist, and many meanings of cause used in you proposition.  Saying l mean all of those doesn't solve the category error.

If I say

All pets pant,
Goldfish are pets
Therefore goldfish pant

The problem is not solved by saying pets includes both dogs and goldfish, and panting includes all forms of breathing whether by mouth or by gills.  When talking about categories animals for purposes of animal physiology pets in an inherently bad category.  And using pant when what you mean is breath, is disingenuous.

The difference between physically existing and the existence of ideas; the difference between the creation of new matter and reforming of existing matter; and the difference between reshaping matter, having ideas and making new matter appear; are too dissimilar to be usefully refered to by the same names in formal proofs.

[Edited for many but probably far from all typos.]

Wonderful analysis!

[Mister Agenda]

RoadRunner, you have a problem with your argument. Kalam supports any deity of choice. Yahweh, Allah, Odin whatever. You have no option but to accept that gods which are not yours must also exist.

It also supports vacuum fluctuations as a cause of the universe.

---

Very few.

Now, why does that not happen? Because of the size of Planck's constant. It is a small enough number, and it controls the rate of 'popping' in such a way that larger masses are less likely (exponentially) to 'pop' than are smaller masses.

So, for example, electron-positron pairs are far more likely than muon-anti-muon pairs simply because a muon is around 200 times the mass of an electron. Both types of 'popping' are still pretty common, though. When you get to something the mass of a proton, the probability (and thereby the rate) of 'popping into existence' is far, far lower. For larger atomic nuclei, the probability is so low, it doesn't tend to happen in practice. For something like a molecule, we would have to wait longer than the age of the universe for a 'pop' to happen.

So, you wanted to know why we don't see an elephant 'pop into existence'. That is the reason: elephants have way too large of a mass to make the probability of 'popping' significant.

Not to mention every electron and positron that appeared would have to happen to be in exactly the right position to make an elephant. And if it did happen (the number of universes required to make it halfway likely has more zeroes than I can wrap my head around), it would probably be in space, and the poor thing would die right away.

[possibletarian]

How many of these exist apart from our material universe ?

They all could/probably do if in fact the supernatural exists. However, that is not the argument.

It was however the question.

This is why I am done with Grandizer, Polymath, and Mathilda (and probably Jenny) on this subject. They seem incapable of taking that step back and seeing this point.

I have little interest in your inability to counter their points. In the context of this discussion the question is not 'do things have causes' but 'does the universe have an un-caused causer'.  Even with my limited knowledge I can see the difference between the two.

[Amarok]

No Steve in imagine their done with you . Do to your utter failure to counter their points.

[I_am_not_mafia]

No Steve in imagine their done with you . Do to your utter failure to counter their points.

This.

[Amarok]

Whoops typo 

No Steve i  imagine their done with you . Due to your utter failure to counter their points.

their

[LadyForCamus]

As to Odin, I didn't have much interest, so I didn't become involved in the thread, until thread creep made it into something else.  Now if I was making comments and claims against Odin, things would be different.

Lol, who is the thread creep?

---

[quote='possibletarian' pid='1724193' dateline='1522155585']They all could/probably do if in fact the supernatural exists. However, that is not the argument. The point is we can see that even abstract concepts and objects that are not bound by the physical laws of the universe require a causal principle. This fact further supports the idea that a causal principle is an objective feature of all reality and therefore cannot be separated from the concept of existence. Tell me, can you conceive of a reality that has no governing causal principle? There would be no structure to even hold anything material together nor any duration/enduring of anything.[i]

This is simply an argument from personal incredulity.

There would be no possibility of even thinking (defined as a process of ordered thoughts).

Then how does god do it?

So, if we can't conceive of such a reality, why would we deny the premise "anything that begins to exist has a cause" is a lot more likely true than not?

There was a time in my life when I couldn’t conceive of evolution, but to say, ‘therefore it can’t be true’ is again, an argument from personal incredulity.

---

Again if you're going to call the man a liar your going to have to provide proof other than insinuations because his claims are too fantastical for you to believe.

And I find interesting that the only source you're using is one with a clear agenda and zero objectivity.

Would you be convinced if I started posting info from a flat earth website?

So, this is really interesting, and relevant to the OP.

On the one hand, you accept the extraordinary testimony of a priest that a light is god, and you accept the extraordinary testimony of a miraculous healing, but you do not accept mundane testimony that a man was seen faking his crutches, and you do not accept Upshaw’s own testimony that he hadn’t been bed or wheelchair bound for twenty years, which would make Branham a liar.  So, testimony is sufficient evidence only when it confirms your pre-conclusions?  Got it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I'm sure you are frustrated. You have at least two category errors. Whenever this is pointed out to you, you return to the Aristitileon categories of cause which are at least in part the cause of your category error.

1. What Do You Mean By Exist?
The first catagory error is equating the existence of physical objects, energy, with the existence of ideas. These are two very different meanings of the word "exist."
To see how different they are, all you have to do is ask where does it exist?

- My emphasis -

Existence has always been a term of art in philosophy, but by insisting that the defining feature of existence is having a spatial location begs the question by excluding any other definition of existence that does not rely on physical properties – what the Scholastics called sensible bodies because these are known to the senses as bodies. What you take issue is with is the notion of intelligible objects and are simply attempting to define them away .

Where is the English language? Where is The Pythagorean Theorem? Or where is Beethoven's Fifth are not. At best you might say Engish is spoken in these places, or Pythagoras's Theorim is set out in my math book, or my score of the Fifth is over there on the desk. But that's only physical places where the ideas are recorded. They don't exist except as recorded in a brain or some other physical object.

Those are all good questions. The examples you gave reveal the limitations of your definition of existence. You will only acknowledge that things are real, if and only if, they can have an independent existence. Ignoring for the moment their subtle differences, your insistence that immaterial things like language, music, and mathematics only exist in some material form is only half right. Objective things can be real and distinguishable even if they cannot be alienable. The very fact that meaning can be conveyed in various languages , in writing or through speech, and recorded in different media only shows that meaning is something distinctly real apart from the material in which it manifests.

You can ask any group of third-graders to go out and find triangular things, or metallic things, or wedges, or bakery goods. And they will return with things that are objectively manifest things with real forms, real materials, real purposes, and real origins.

You see, materiality and extension in time and space are just two objective properties among others. Like all the others these appear to be inalienable from sensible bodies. Material and efficient causes are as much abstractions as formal and final ones. There is no metallic object that does not manifest to greater or lesser degree a form.

2. What Do You Mean By Begin to Exist?

This is because all physical objects have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense of the word, that is to say they are made of something. And when we say something begins to be an elephant we mean that the matter out of which the elephant is made took the form of an elephant. We don't mean new matter popped into existence and became an elephant.

That’s true the elephant did not begin to exist until some matter took the form of an elephant. But the elephant’s existence is more than just the matter of which it is made. In fact, the matter out of which it is made will change as the elephant grows from conception through its maturity. And upon death the matter will remain even after the elephant has ceased to exist. That’s all we have been saying. The existence of the elephant began at some point and ended at some later point.

Any theory of existence must account for something, like an elephant, to persist in its existence despite undergoing change. Limiting yourself to only material and efficient causes cannot account for either.

Unfortunately, that’s all I have time for today, JennyA. I wish I had time to explain more about intelligible objects.

[Jenny A]

I'm sure you are frustrated.  You have at least two category errors.  Whenever this is pointed out to you, you return to the Aristitileon categories of cause which are at least in part the cause of your category error.

1. What Do You Mean By Exist?
The first catagory error is equating the existence of physical objects, energy, with the existence of ideas. These are two very different meanings of the word "exist."  
To see how different they are, all you have to do is ask where does it exist?

- My emphasis -

Existence has always been a term of art in philosophy, but by insisting that the defining feature of existence is having a spatial location begs the question by excluding any other definition of existence that does not rely on physical properties – what the Scholastics called sensible bodies because these are known to the senses as bodies. What you take issue is with is the notion of intelligible objects and are simply attempting to define them away .

I don't mean to suggest that ideas don't exist.  They exist, but they do not exist in the way that physical objects do.  Nor do they existence independent of minds to think them.  This makes them a very different category of existing then that of physical objects. 

Where is the English language? Where is The Pythagorean Theorem?   Or where is Beethoven's Fifth are not.  At best you might say Engish is spoken in these places, or Pythagoras's  Theorim is set out in my math book, or my score of the Fifth is over there on the desk.  But that's only physical places where the ideas are recorded.  They don't exist except as recorded in a brain or some other physical object.

Those are all good questions. The examples you gave reveal the limitations of your definition of existence. You will only acknowledge that things are real, if and only if, they can have an independent existence. Ignoring for the moment their subtle differences, your insistence that immaterial things like language, music, and mathematics only exist in some material form is only half right. Objective things can be real and distinguishable even if they cannot be alienable.  The very fact that meaning can be conveyed in various languages , in writing or through speech, and recorded in different media only shows that meaning is something distinctly real apart from the material in which it manifests.

You can ask any group of third-graders to go out and find triangular things, or metallic things, or wedges, or bakery goods. And they will return with things that are objectively manifest things with real forms, real materials, real purposes, and real origins.

You see, materiality and extension in time and space are just two objective properties among others. Like all the others these appear to be inalienable from sensible bodies. Material and efficient causes are as much abstractions as formal and final ones. There is no metallic object that does not manifest to greater or lesser degree a form.

I don't see how the ability to translate the word triangle into another language (or to write it rather the say it for that matter) makes the concept independent of the minds that think the concept.  And the appellation triangle is a useful concept.  But nothing about trangular shaped object is added to the object itself by the children's identification.  

I'm curious though,  if you think the concept triangle exists independent of minds to think it, do you think it began to exist, or do you think the concept is eternal?  If you do think it began to exist, when would you say it began? I believe it began to exist when the first mind created the category.  

Also, do you think that the existence of ideas and objects is similar enough that anything about how one came to be can be usefully compared to how the other came to be?  My position is that they cannot and even if I accepted your idea of an independently existing triangle, I still find them too dissimilar for such a comparison.

This is because all physical objects have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense of the word, that is to say they are made of something.  And when we say something begins to be an elephant we mean that the matter out of which the elephant is made took the form of an elephant.  We don't mean new matter popped into existence and became an elephant.

That’s true the elephant did not begin to exist until some matter took the form of an elephant. But the elephant’s existence is more than just the matter of which it is made. In fact, the matter out of which it is made will change as the elephant grows from conception through its maturity. And upon death the matter will remain even after the elephant has ceased to exist. That’s all we have been saying. The existence of the elephant began at some point and ended at some later point.

Any theory of existence must account for something, like an elephant, to persist in its existence despite undergoing change. Limiting yourself to only material and efficient causes cannot account for either.

Unfortunately, that’s all I have time for today, JennyA. I wish I had time to explain more about intelligible objects.

Oh dear, I'm really not ready to consider why elephants persist from birth to death despite numerous changes in composition, size and shape.  Nor am I going to argue the elephant didnt begin to exist and then cease.  But that beginning is remarkably different from the germ of an idea.  It's a whole different order of to begin.  And if the matter out of which the elephant began to exist began to exist, that too is an entirely different order of to begin.