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

[SteveII]

What was the material cause of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony? These things began to exist (along with like 4 trillion other examples I could give). 


There are other problems with you list, but let's start there.

That's ludicrously easy a brain is the cause. Unless you can prove the brain is more than matter ?

Even if the brain is = to the imagination (which it is not), that still is not an example of a material cause. Mainly because neither the novel nor the symphony is material. Yet, they exist. 

• Matter: a change or movement's material "cause", is the aspect of the change or movement which is determined by the material that composes the moving or changing things. For a table, that might be wood; for a statue, that might be bronze or marble.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes
  

---

As I explained above, you are zeroing in on one aspect of causation that is obviously too restrictive when talking about thing that may have happened prior to the first moments of the universe. 

1. Everything that begins to exist has an efficient cause.

How do you know this?

Also, this is just silliness if you think about it for more than five minutes:

Matter: the change or movement which is determined by the material that composes the moving or changing things. For a table, that might be wood; for a statue, that might be bronze or marble.

Versus:

Agent: a change or movement's efficient or moving "cause", consists of things apart from the thing being changed or moved, which interact so as to be an agency of the change or movement. For example, the efficient cause of a table is a carpenter, or a person working as one, and according to Aristotle the efficient cause of a boy is a father.

These two things are indistinguishable with regard to any physical thing within the universe.  I could just as easily reason that the carpenter is the material cause for a table, seeing as humans are made of the same ‘material’; atoms; as wood.  Along with everything else that exists in the universe for that matter.  What is the material cause of a sand dune?  What is the efficient cause?  How can you tell the difference?
Perhaps the universe’s efficient cause is also a material cause.

As Vulc explained in the beginning, the KCA commits a composition fallacy.  There is no getting around this.

My example of the novel and the symphony address your point. 

If you continue further down the path of reasoning that the carpenter is made of atoms..., you are going to arrive at nothing ever beginning to exist. The material cause of a sand dune is easy: sand. The efficient cause is the wind. 

Regarding the Composition Fallacy claim, I did respond to that in Post #567:

(1) The premise does not limit itself to the universe or reason from experiences within the universe. You are imposing a limit, not me. The argument claims that it is a general principle, a feature of existence, an obvious metaphysical truth. 

There is no composition fallacy because we are not inferring the universe has a cause because everything in it is caused. The claim is that it is a general principle (as we have been discussing).