(December 19, 2010 at 6:13 am)Captain Scarlet Wrote:(December 19, 2010 at 5:48 am)theVOID Wrote: Firstly, what is your proof for complexity being necessarily caused? What is your proof that something that is complex was necessarily simple at an earlier time? If complexity is posited at t0 (which God is) then it cannot possibly have an antecedent simplicity, Thus far these points remain bare assertions.
Complexity is a result of simpler systems compounding over time. It is a process; a causal sequence.
That is the same assertion. Complexity is not defined as a compounding of simple things over time, it is usually defined as a composite of interrelated parts. Can you prove that there are no composites that form spontaneously or have always existed? That is what you are required to do if you assert that definition of complexity.
Quote: To be sentient requires conciousness; to be conscious is to be aware; being aware of something presupposes awareness; awareness, is itself a causal sequence.
You still can't show that awareness is necessarily a causal sequence, all you can say is that we only know of awareness coming about through causal sequence. You still have the black swan fallacy, you've just dumped a layer of obfuscation upon it.
Quote: That sequence is more complex than the preceding 'parts'.
A sequence refers to the change over a dimension (in this case time), not the aggregate of the change. You might want to rephrase this because at the moment I can only guess what you mean.
Quote: But even still, if God is conscious, then he must have some means of consciousness and be dynamic. If he is dynamic then he must himself be subject to causality.
I'm not aware of any requirement in theism that he not be causal, William Lane Craig's theology makes God subject to time once he created it, so he goes from an acausal being to a causally influenced one.
Quote:(December 19, 2010 at 5:48 am)theVOID Wrote: Also, just because Sentience does not exist in all creatures does not necessitate that it is caused. You would also have to establish this.If sentience is not present in all beings, then it is not necessary, it is therefore contingent and from the law of cauality it is caused.
Your black swan has risen again. You can only maintain that assertion as it relates to physical beings, the definition of God as an uncaused sentience necessitates that the constraints on sentience in physical things do not apply. You again are implying that because our experience/understanding of sentience is x there cannot be sentience y.
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