(March 26, 2016 at 2:40 am)robvalue Wrote: Everything requires a cause because it is contingent? You're just begging the question through definition.
If you go back and read the conversation, I was responding to someone else, who stated that everything we see has a cause.
Quote:Even if I let this go and say that everything in the universe requires a cause, it's a fallacy of composition to apply that to the universe itself. Properties of the whole need not reflect properties of the parts, or the contents.Again, go back and read again. I wasn't making the argument you think.
Quote:No one knows whether the universe had "a beginning" or not, so it is speculation and nothing more. Trying to apply everday logic to situations where all our scientific models start going bonkers is at best naive.
Are you saying that your position is illogical?
Quote:It's a good thing God is imaginary, or else all these problems would apply to him too. The fact that theists wave such objections away is called special pleading. God is just different. Well, reality as a whole could also be just different. Pushing the problem back a step does not answer it. If God ever showed up in reality, maybe theists would start asking the questions sceptics already have prepared for him.
Please explain, how is this special pleading. I had another try this once, claiming that the statement "everything that begins to exists, has a cause" is special pleading; saying that God did not have a cause. His logic didn't hold and committed suicide, but in typical fashion he declared intellectual superiority and victory all along anyway. Perhaps you can do better.
