(August 14, 2018 at 1:47 pm)SteveII Wrote: You are welcome to interact with my syllogism I wrote above (which I think addresses your point).
Deductive Argument:
1. The cause is past-eternal
2. The effect (the universe) is not past-eternal
3. The cause exists prior to the effect (from 1-2)
4. If a cause is sufficient to produce its effect then if the cause is there, so is the effect.
5. The cause-->effect was not deterministic (from 3-4)
6. A mind with intention (libertarian free will) is the only completely non-deterministic cause
7. Therefore the cause is a mind with intention (personal).
1. There doesn't seem to be much need for it to be past-eternal, but if it is, there is the obvious problem with past-infinites that many take it as a brute fact that if anything is past eternal it is impossible to ever get to the present. I have a counter-intuition that there has to a present at some point, and now is as good a time as any; but that is also a premise I can't support any further. In any case, 1. could be a 'causeless cause' without being past eternal (or personal).
2. The current cosmos is not past-eternal, but to the best of our knowledge it is a transformation of a previous state and what came before that is a mystery. If 1. can be past-eternal, so can the universe, in the broad sense of something having always existed in some form. It may have existed statically forever until something changed (causeless cause), have undergone many transformations, etc. The alternative to something existing is 'philosophical nothingness' which strikes me as an incoherent concept.
3. Within the universe, that's how it works. But it is a fallacy of composition to assume that the way things work within the universe is the way things worked prior to the universe. Just because a wall is made of indestructible bricks doesn't mean the wall is indestructible. Cause proceed effect within the universe, but even then there seem to be exceptions on the quantum level, where events can occur without a proceeding cause, according to quantum mechanics. And the state of the universe prior to the initial expansion was small enough for quantum affects to apply, according to the available evidence and (I'm told) the math.
4. I see no problem with this one.
5. 1-3 were a mess in my opinion, so I can't agree that this has been proven.
6. This is an additional premise/unsupported assertion.
7. You might as well have dumped 1-5 and started with 6 and you'd have just as good a case.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.