Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[R00tKiT]

We're a hyper social species, endowed with a great many adaptations to that effect..though...to be fair to all other life, none of that makes us particularly benevolent - and it causes some pretty serious issues between groups, too.

I want to ask, though, are you willing to account for all of humanities attributes when you propose benevolence through design?  We have flaws too..deep flaws.  Does this suggest the designer is flawed in the way that having some amount of benevolence would suggest the designer is benevolent?  We're flawed, and we can't have gotten what our creator didn't have to give..correct?

Well, there is a problem here. Flawness is the absence/lack of perfectness, not a character per se, we can't apply the same inference on a negative concept. Furthermore, there is no logical problem with a perfect being creating imperfect creatures. Even if one makes the very strong (and wrong) assumption that a perfect being must create the best of all possible worlds, it can still be imperfect beings enjoying perfect conditions.

The no boundary proposal?

The no boundary proposal entails that the universe began to exist,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%...king_state

QUOTE :However, Hawking does state "...the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago."

If the universe has not existed forever, it began to exist. 

That's just a claim. For the third time: do you have any reference of what's above.....??


It doesn't follow that there is a law that describes causality. The word "law" is simply a label we put on have we describe repeatable phenomena around us, nothing tells us that are laws outside of the universe -assuming there is an outside.

And there is nothing logically incoherent about a lawless universe.

And in such a universe, there would be no causality.

There you go, dodging my request again:

I need a reference stating that causality is a physical law, as you said pages ago, and a demonstration of the assertion above: that a lawless universe could violate causality.

I can wait.

No, the universe is NOT an element of that causal chain. The causal chain happens *within* the universe.

Um, what are you even talking about? The entire discussion was about what caused the universe, which means the universe is the last element of the causal chain.

And what makes it impossible to have an infinite sequence of events preceding something? it seems like a perfectly sensible thing to me.

What makes it impossible is that this something will never happen. In order to get to this something(S), an infinite amount of events should occur, which takes, in turn, an infinitely long amount of time to get to S. And since an infinitely long period will never elapse, S will never exist.

That's why an eternal past is impossible, an eternal past is by definition an unending period in the past, and any unending period can't have a present moment occuring after it, because it takes eternity for this past to "end".

Yes, we absolutely observe the law of excluded middle at the classical level *and* its violation at the quantum level. it is a matter of observation whether logic with the law of excluded middle is helpful or not. There are versions of logic without it and, for example, quantum logic is found to be useful.

No, you're absolutely wrong. I assume you're referring to an object's ability to be in two places at once. This is not a violation of the law of excluded middle because, under QM, objects are by definition capable of being everywhere at once, therefore, classical logic still applies to properly formulated sentences about QM.

QM only shakes up our definitions of objects and how we label reality around us, but once our labels/definitions are accurate, or say, updated, then classical logic will work wonderfully on these definitions.

Quantum logic comes from the vast topic of interpreting quantum mechanics, it eventually fell out of favor. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic#Criticism
Quote : "The approach of quantum logic has been generally seen as unsuccessful. The eminent philosopher of science Tim Maudlin writes, “the horse of quantum logic has been so thrashed, whipped and pummeled, and is so thoroughly deceased that...the question is not whether the horse will rise again, it is: how in the world did this horse get here in the first place? The tale of quantum logic is not the tale of a promising idea gone bad, it is rather the tale of the unrelenting pursuit of a bad idea.” The entire mathematical complex structure of quantum mechanics is perfectly well-described and clear and understood using classical logic."

Read again: The entire mathematical complex structure of quantum mechanics is perfectly well-described and clear and understood using classial logic.

Yeah , classical logic works.

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For any existing universe, the two propositions, P :"A universe began to exist" and Q :"A universe has an eternal past" are mutually exclusive,  one of them must be true, Q is simply non-P. This is the basic law of excluded middle. 

Unless you're willing to deny the most basic rules of logic and delve into sophistry, you are forced to pick one of these propositions. 

You have presented neither deductive nor inductive argument for their mutual exclusivity.  

Tell me @Angrboda, what's the opposite of the word eternal ?

Gosh.

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Wrong. As been demonstrated in this very thread. Amazing that you think you’ve solved mysteries of reality that the greatest scientific minds in the world

Bickering about causality or the law of the excluded middle is not a "mystery of reality", it's sophism. The greatest scientific minds in the world aren't sophists, I hope.. for our sake....

And even if we grant you those assumptions, that still only gets you to “a cause.” Not a god. 

How generous of you. Tell you what, don't grant me anything, either accept causality or be more upfront about your denial of the simplest principles of thought.