(August 31, 2026 at 10:34 am)Angrboda Wrote:(August 31, 2026 at 9:00 am)Jal Wrote: "Your conclusions simply do not follow." Well duh. Nobody's conclusions "follow". Pretty much all conclusions are tentative. I can't give you an absolute proof of hardly anything. I can't even prove that you exist. You might be AI, for example. Not to mention solipsism. On the other hand I don't think my conclusions are arbitrary.
"If matter can always have existed then why can't it always have been in motion." With no START for the motion? That heralds an infinite past with no beginning. Total gibberish. Total nonsense. Just because I can't prove anything doesn't mean I must opt for those conclusions that strike me as least cogent and sound like gibberish. I don't care how many scholars endorse such solutions. I respect scholars but, at the end of the day, I have to decide for myself whether I agree with their conclusions.
An infinite past is one way in which things could have always been in motion. There being no initial temporal boundary in the beginning being another. You imagine the former but not the latter and prematurely close the inquiry. This is the problem with incredulity as an argument, it is limited to what we know and can imagine. Given the arguments you've made, and my experience with similar arguments, I know from experience that your incredulous doubts do not hold up to scrutiny. Now, if you want to pass judgment on what experts believe as a purely personal matter, determining what you wish to believe, that's your prerogative. As a matter of you being here, you are making an argument that we should accept your conclusions, it's no longer a question of your belief, your argument need overcome our skepticism. For a variety of reasons it fails to do so. You're welcome to believe that you have presented a good case, but your presentation reveals that it is informed by ignorance, a lack of imagination, a general lack of logical rigor, and several logical flaws which despite your attempts to mitigate them with inappropriate analogies continue to bedevil the wholer edifice. In short, the only person you've managed to convince is yourself. And as Feynman observed, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool." The evidence from people that know what they are talking about, not those with limited imaginations and distinctly cloistered knowledge bases (you), find the things you consider implausible wholly plausible. So I have two options. I can remain agnostic about your conclusion, my preferred stance, or if forced to weigh your opinion against that of experts, come down decidedly on the side of experts. That's your starting point. And so far you haven't moved the ball any with logically constructed argument or informed explanations. Why should I believe your opinion about the credibility of these things? Give me one good reason why I should grant your incredulity a shred of credibility? Like many arguments rooted in religion, what you present is not likely to persuade any but those who are already sympathetic to your conclusions. That's a telling sign that all your blather cannot overcome.
Occam's Razor. If I can easily account for stuff without recourse to gibberish such as an infinite past, it probably behooves me to do so.
"I know from experience that your incredulous doubts do not hold up to scrutiny." That may be true. I didn't say my argument was apodictic, nor was it meant to win you to my position. It's just a tentative opinion that I felt inclined to share with the gallery. Feel free to ignore it.
You seem to appeal to authority, perhaps too much for my taste. I cannot 100% trust scholars. They are not infallible. When they seem unreasonable, I have to formulate my own arguments and conclusions. On this thread, I don't see anyone defeating the basic argument made in my OP.
