RE: I will prove to you that God exists
April 10, 2025 at 12:45 pm
(This post was last modified: April 10, 2025 at 12:46 pm by Angrboda.)
(April 10, 2025 at 12:16 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(April 10, 2025 at 9:51 am)Drew_2013 Wrote: How did the forces that caused the universe to expand operate? Were those 'natural' forces inside spacetime that hadn't come into existence yet? A laptop isn't the universe its a far less complex contrivance. If mindless natural forces can cause the universe a laptop is child's play.
You miss the point. A laptop (or a pocket watch) is a demonstrably manufactured thing you can quite literally watch them being made. No one has ever seen a universe being made. This is, and always has been a false analogy.
Again, I suggest you read Hume’s A Treatise On Human Understanding. It’s a bit heavy going, but very valuable in pointing out the flaws in your argument.
Boru
If you mean to direct him to Hume's comments regarding the analogy implicit in arguments for design, that is in Part II of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
To wit:
Quote:Hume criticizes the argument on two main grounds. First, Hume rejects the analogy between the material universe and any particular human artifact. As Hume states the relevant rule of analogy, “wherever you depart in the least, from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and uncertainty” (Hume, Dialogues, Part II). Hume then goes on to argue that the cases are simply too dissimilar to support an inference that they are like effects having like causes:
"If we see a house,… we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had an architect or builder because this is precisely that species of effect which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But surely you will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect (Hume, Dialogues, Part II)."
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy || Argument from Design
Though I confess, it's probably immaterial as Drew not infrequently doesn't understand the thing to which he is objecting.
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