God's God

[median]

Where is your evidence that something can't come from nothing, when you have no 'nothing' to examine in which something could derive?

Wow! You really are dense. Where did I say the physical universe came out of nothing? The whole point of the cosmological argument is that ‘nothing comes out of nothing’. The physical universe is a something that comes out of another something, just something not bound by the rules of physics.

LOL. Calling me dense doesn't do shit to help your case there tough guy - neither does it answer the question that has been before you (regarding demonstrating your alleged deity thing). But now you have another task before you. Please demonstrate how there can be anything "not bound by the rules of physics". What makes you so sure you fully understand all these "rules" and that any interpretation other than yours is unsound? You act as if you have some great knowledge beyond our current local universe, that it's just impossible that things came to be the way we now experience them w/out some cosmic disembodied "personal" mind.

Btw, nice dodge! I'll ask it again. How do you know something can't come from nothing when you have no 'nothing' to examine from which something could derive?

No you just ignored it an kept on repeating refutations you read somewhere without bothering to consider whether or not they applied to the claims being made.

NOPE. Another lie.

You're Zeno's paradox was already dealt with, back then and now.

I’m sure even you recognize that you just made an argument from authority.

NOPE. I just said I wasn't going to deal with it at the time b/c it was already responded to. Read more. It helps.

The mental mathematical process of thinking about abstract infinities has no bearing on the possibility of an infinity.

So you think people should not use mathematics in the pursuit of knowledge. Queer position for a person that claims to have reason on their side.

The only thing 'queer' here is your perpetual intellectual dishonesty - the willingness to misrepresent what I stated in an attempt to make your case easier (straw man fallacy). Nice try though.

Not so. I presented a counter-factual. The premise in question is true because its opposite produces paradoxical results that defy logic. In order to maintain your refutation of the cosmological argument, you must hold two contradictory beliefs.

LOL. "Defy logic" eh? That's your assertion but it wasn't demonstrated by your premises. Merely saying they "defy logic" doesn't cut it - nor does attempting a version of Zeno's paradox which has no bearing of whether an actual infinity (whatever that means) can exist. "Paradox" does not equal (and is not in any way equivalent to) "illogical". AT BEST, you have a place where you ought to be admitting ignorance on the subject.

Moreover, you just admitted that you do not know what an [is] ‘actual infinity’ which means you really didn’t understand what you were reading. That makes you just another new atheist blowhard.

You haven't demonstrated that you know what an "actual infinity" is either, just like you haven't demonstrated your alleged deity in any coherent way. Sorry, the "blowing hard" is all yours.

Actually, my presentation of the cosmological argument has nothing to to with inserting entities into an area of unknown. Quite the opposite. [I never mentioned God].

LOL. Really? So a "non-contingent immaterial agent" (your words) is not an "unknown" eh? LOL. Please...Come back when you have something more than just word games and obfuscation.

"Feel the Christian love!"

We are to love the Lord and our neighbor as ourselves.

[median]

[Godscreated]

@ median and Ryan, Let's say I see a man stabbed and run to his aide, then the assailant stabs me leaves behind the knife and flees. Then a person comes along and finds us, the man I saw stabbed is dead and I'm dying. The person who finds us calls 911, the police arrive and ask me what happens, I tell them the name of the person who stabbed us, I tell them I've known him for years and he was a very unstable individual, I then die. This man is convicted on my dying testimony, why, I proved nothing, demonstrated nothing, for all anyone knows I stabbed the man, then he took the knife from me and stabbed me. Maybe I did not like the man I named and wanted revenge. Yet my dying testimony was all it took to convict this person, no proof he was even there other than what I said.
Why would you as a juror accept this? Even though I told the truth there is no demonstrable proof I did, so why is this man in jail.

No I would not accept that as enough evidence to convict.

It would make the police search for evidence that supported your though.

As you yourself pointed out there are a number of different scenerios that could have led to the deaths.

The verdict was guilty, you are trying to change what happened, answer the question that arrived from the story. You need to stop making up your own questions and giving answer to them, that's dishonest.

[Esquilax]

No I would not accept that as enough evidence to convict.

It would make the police search for evidence that supported your though.

As you yourself pointed out there are a number of different scenerios that could have led to the deaths.

The verdict was guilty, you are trying to change what happened, answer the question that arrived from the story. You need to stop making up your own questions and giving answer to them, that's dishonest.

I think the issue at hand is that your story is working from flawed premises and arrived at an unrealistic conclusion. Anything you thus draw from this conclusion will not reflect reality, so insisting that your narrative be taken at face value tells us nothing about the real world.

Despite your claims, nobody has ever been convicted of murder solely on the basis of "a guy said he did it, and then died."

[Tonus]

Why would you as a juror accept this? Even though I told the truth there is no demonstrable proof I did, so why is this man in jail.

Based on what you described, there would be no logical reason for a juror to vote guilty on such flimsy evidence. If the man is in jail, it is due to a miscarriage of justice. Was no other evidence collected and presented to a jury? Did the accused killer's counsel make no attempt to defend him? Did the jury simply reject the rest of the evidence? Or did they find the lack of evidence to be of no consequence?

[median]

No I would not accept that as enough evidence to convict.

It would make the police search for evidence that supported your though.

As you yourself pointed out there are a number of different scenerios that could have led to the deaths.

The verdict was guilty, you are trying to change what happened, answer the question that arrived from the story. You need to stop making up your own questions and giving answer to them, that's dishonest.

LOL. This is just about as much comedy as your bible fiction. So basically, you've concocted a story (and from the outset) tried to force us into agreeing with your (non-real) story. And now you are trying to ask us why we "agreed" with you in the story??? Could you GET anymore irrational? Your story commits the fallacy of begging the question (as well as the fallacy of complex question). We don't buy that Person X would have been convicted on your personal testimony alone. That is the point Mr. Gullible. Sorry. It's really sad that you can't see this.

Btw, if a jury did ever convict a man of murder on one person's dying testimony alone (and that's a big IF) I would say they made a big mistake! In fact, they would have made a huge mistake JUST LIKE THE MISTAKE YOU ARE MAKING WITH YOUR RELIGION! You don't "know" there was eyewitness testimony of some 'Jesus of Nazareth' who supposedly rose from the dead. You assume! Just like you're assuming that some fictional jury convicted a man of murder on one persons testimony alone. It's fallacious (and gullibility based) reasoning.

[Lord Privy Seal]

But there is one big problem. What relationship binds each of these Plank units together? Each smallest finite unit of anything exists as a discrete entity for all others. They could be stacked in any random order.

This is an unsubstantiated claim. Since you're talking about quantized time, "sequence" is part of what we mean by the concept. Even if we don't yet understand all the nuances yet, there is a demonstrable "arrow of time." You can't un-scramble an egg by stirring in the opposite direction. Entropy. Now, you can claim that a god has to step in and "cause" the scrambling of the egg to come after the egg is laid by the chicken because otherwise the sequence would be random. You just don't have any evidence that a random sequence is even possible, much less a default state that a god has to come in and "fix."

It would be like a film strip cut into single frames and taped back together in a different order.

Now that would require a god! You're stating implicitly here that in order to create the random sequence, somebody would have to come along, cut up the film strip, rearrange the frames, and tape them back together. The randomized film strip is evidence of external meddling. A normal temporal sequence on a film strip is an instance of the film working normally, without external intervention. By analogy, dis-arranged temporal sequences (e.g. somebody gets an egg out of the carton after they eat it, then they scramble it on their stove) would be evidence for divine intervention.

Or maybe only one actually exists. After all, what exactly is the past, except a memory in the present. And what is the future except a present unrealized potential. Each instant comes into being and perishes without cause since they depend on nothing outside themselves for their individual existence.

Just because a quantized instant of time is distinct from other such instants does not mean it is unconnected to the other instants temporally adjacent to it.

Now, causality, as we understand it means change between states. So if you say that change happens and that change conforms to order (unlike the random filmstrip), in which transcendent formal relationships exist across the smallest finite units.

You're presupposing that time could be (or perhaps inherently is) a random hash of unrelated quantum instances, and that a god has to come in and piece them together like a scholar reconstructing a fragmented Dead Sea Scroll. We have no reason to assume that non-existence and randomness are ontologically primary, thus requiring a god to show up and impose existence and order from "outside."

Even if we grant such premises, where does a god get its existence and order from? "He just has them. That's just how he works." That's special pleading. The core premise is that things like existence and order require "explanation" (because their opposites are the default state). Positing a "god" doesn't provide an explanation, it just kicks the can down the road.

In effect, the cosmological argument implies that the continuity of the universe depends on a causal agent that imposes such a form.

Only if you first assume that non-existence and chaos are the default state. We have no reason to make this assumption. All of the evidence we have indicates that energy/matter is conserved (neither created, nor destroyed), and behaves in accordance with its nature (a quark acts like a quark and not a kitten, etc.).

Who/what imposes continuity and order on the causal agent? "He just has them, because he's God. He's the Necessary Being!" Or in other words, you assume that non-existence and chaos are the default state until you get to your god, then you assume the opposite. We can just as easily assume (or at least grant the possibility of) the opposite (that existence and natural regularity are the default state) right here in known Universe, in which case Occam's Razor can dispose of the god as unecessary.

You theists are also missing median's point about "global universe." If we define what emerged from our Big Bang as "the Cosmos," and everything that is real (including whatever gods and goddesses might exist) as Universe (capital-U, no "the"), then the Kalam argument falls. The Kalam argument proposes something like this:

First Cause--->Cosmos

It is assumed that non-existence and chaos are the default in the Cosmos, but that existence and order are the default for the First Cause and whatever realm it calls home. The causal arrow indicates that the FC is exporting existence and order from where they exist inherently, into the realm of non-existence and chaos. However, what Median refers to as "global universe" and I refer to as "Universe" encompasses the whole system:

[First Cause--->Cosmos] = "Universe" (or "global universe" in Median's terminology)

Taken as a whole, existence and order are inherent properties of the system, and cannot be externally imposed because there is no "external" from whence such an imposition can come. Since it is possible for existence and order to be inherent, the whole reason for the Kalam argument disappears.

Either the physical universe is complete random chaos or it has an inherent order. Take your pick. Either could be true. What you will find however, is that such a transcendent inherent order has many attributes traditionally associated with a monotheistic god.

Some, perhaps, but not the ones the theists are most interested in. The equation "2+2=4" is eternal (valid throughout all possible instances of time), omnipresent (there is no conceivable place where it does not apply), and omnipotent (every 2, added to another 2, inevitably results in 4, and no force can make it otherwise). Does this make "2+2" Divine? Should we worship it? How do we know that the fundamental root of order and existence is not something similar--something that could be represented by an equation? We know equations exist, and (when valid) possess the required attributes.

A "monotheistic god" is most commonly represented as a type of thinking, language-using, social person who engages in status-seeking among humans ("Praise me! Worship me! Obey me! Or else!"). A monotheistic god by definition does not tolerate the worship of other gods and goddesses, demanding a monopoly on human attention and reverence.

The Kalam argument doesn't lead us to anywhere within light-years of such a thing. If anything, those attributes--which are the ones religious monotheists care the most about--are contradicted by the Kalam. For one thing, if there can be no such thing as an actual infinity, then the god cannot have an endless sequence of thoughts, intentions, emotions, etc. There must (by the logic of the Kalam) be a First Thought, a First Emotion, a First Intention, and so on. On the other hand, if the god was not always a thinking, feeling, talking person whose primary desire is to be the sole, undisputed King of the Humans, then he was not always "god" as defined and desired by monotheists, and something must have caused him.

And so we've returned to question posed by the OP.

[Ryantology]

The verdict was guilty, you are trying to change what happened, answer the question that arrived from the story. You need to stop making up your own questions and giving answer to them, that's dishonest.

If any of us were actually on that jury, the person would never have been convicted because there would not be a unanimous decision to convict, so forcing us to vote in a way none of us would have, just to prove a point, is dishonest and makes your point invalid.

[median]

We have no reason to assume that non-existence and randomness are ontologically primary, thus requiring a god to show up and impose existence and order from "outside."

Either the physical universe is complete random chaos or it has an inherent order. Take your pick. Either could be true. What you will find however, is that such a transcendent inherent order has many attributes traditionally associated with a monotheistic god.

Some, perhaps, but not the ones the theists are most interested in. The equation "2+2=4" is eternal (valid throughout all possible instances of time), omnipresent (there is no conceivable place where it does not apply), and omnipotent (every 2, added to another 2, inevitably results in 4, and no force can make it otherwise). Does this make "2+2" Divine? Should we worship it? How do we know that the fundamental root of order and existence is not something similar--something that could be represented by an equation? We know equations exist, and (when valid) possess the required attributes.

A "monotheistic god" is most commonly represented as a type of thinking, language-using, social person who engages in status-seeking among humans ("Praise me! Worship me! Obey me! Or else!"). A monotheistic god by definition does not tolerate the worship of other gods and goddesses, demanding a monopoly on human attention and reverence.

The Kalam argument doesn't lead us to anywhere within light-years of such a thing. If anything, those attributes--which are the ones religious monotheists care the most about--are contradicted by the Kalam. For one thing, if there can be no such thing as an actual infinity, then the god cannot have an endless sequence of thoughts, intentions, emotions, etc. There must (by the logic of the Kalam) be a First Thought, a First Emotion, a First Intention, and so on. On the other hand, if the god was not always a thinking, feeling, talking person whose primary desire is to be the sole, undisputed King of the Humans, then he was not always "god" as defined and desired by monotheists, and something must have caused him.

And so we've returned to question posed by the OP.

Checkmate!

[Tex]

Did you completely miss the post? Your examples commit the fallacy of false analogy. Absolutely ZERO of those things (anesthesia, water, magnesium, mustard gas, etc) are supernatural or extraordinary claims. They are quite common and can be DEMONSTRATED with little or no equivocation, and can be used (quite effectively) for making testable, repeatable, falsifiable, predictions. Can you demonstrate your alleged deity unequivocally (in the same exact fashion that you can demonstrate salt dissolving in water)? Someone just telling you about an alleged pet fire-breathing unicorn dragon is far removed from a claim to salt dissolving in water. It really sounds like you are willing to believe whatever tickles your ears and makes you feel comfortable. Do you believe everything you hear?

I'm not trying to prove supernatural or extraordinary claims with this. I'm trying to say that I do not personally need to experience something to know it is true. It is acceptable to read what others wrote. Otherwise, we can never say that anything written is credible. "I never saw Julius Caesar, therefore his existence is inconclusive" is not ignorant. Wouldn't you agree?

I desire evidence, but I don't need first hand experience.