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

[LadyForCamus]

You are not differentiating between our inductive experience and our inductive reasoning. They are not the same thing. For the past nearly 100 years people have dedicated their lives to figuring out what might have come before our universe. A super-obvious assumption MUST be present to even begin that enterprise: that there exists, as an objective feature of reality, a Causal Principle.

Are you saying that The Causal Priniple is not born out of our inductive experience? If not, then why do its proponents assume it’s an obvious truth? What about the principle makes it obvious other than our direct experience of a universe that we can best describe in terms of causal chains? Isn’t that what human intuition is, after all? Instinct derived from our aggregate experiences? We are forever limited to our experience as beings within this universe, and as constituents of it.  I don’t see any way we can soundly reason beyond that experience. I agree with you that there are probably objective features to reality, but I don’t see that a positive case for the CP as an objective feature has been sufficiently argued.  ‘Everything that exists in the universe has a cause, therefore things we don’t know about, or may never be able to know about, also have to have causes’ is still a composition fallacy.  

When debating something like this, one possible goal is to show the high intellectual price your opponent has to pay for objecting to a premise. This is one such case. Let's see:

A) Because the KCA is a inductive argument and the premises are probabilities, what you are actually claiming when you say Premise (1) is false is that it is more probable that it is false.

I feel like you’re talking past me.  I’m not asserting premise (1) is false.  I’m saying you have no way to demonstrate or justify that assumption is an obvious truth, or that it’s more likely true than not.  If you can’t, then the argument is stalled at (1). Even if I grant you (1), you’re now stuck at (2).  ‘I set them up unjustified, and if you can’t knock them down, I win’ is not how this works.  The onus is on you.

That a causal principle is not an objective feature of reality is more likely true.  You have to propose that it was at least possible for our universe to just pop into being. But what makes universes so special that only they can pop into being? Why doesn't just anything pop into being today?

First of all, this is the same composition fallacy, restated.  Things within our universe can’t pop into being, therefore the universe it’s self cannot.  I’m not even sure what you mean by, “pop into being”.  Jehanne just put up a thread with some current scientific hypotheses describing an eternal, infinite universe, despite your foot stamping about the math.  

state of existence cannot be described coherently without a causal principle.

You must mean that we humans cannot describe our experiences within the universe without using causal principles in our descriptions, right?  That, I would agree with.  But, how can we possibly reason beyond that?  

Go ahead, try to describe such a state of affairs. What can or cannot happen when you need no prior state for absolutely nothing (or is it everything)? I'm interested to hear you try.

An eternal universe.  Infinite space and time.  No beginning, and no end.

Nope. Cosmogony has large amounts of metaphysics built in.

I’m not sure what you mean here.