Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[Whateverist]

mumbo jumbo

I'm not impressed and I'm certainly not convinced. You say that the idea that something always came before something else is impossible and based on that you conclude a magic being did it in a manner that can't be comprehended let alone explained. Why even bother with logic if in the end you're going to hand it over to magic anyway.

You're not impressed by logical arguments? What I said wasn't mumbo-jumbo, but something easily comprehensible to anyone who is familiar with analytic philosophy and formal argumentation. So, if you're claiming what I said is nonsense, it is showing that you do not understand either of these things.

I'll give you this to chew on while you're pondering your reply:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21...event.html

Actually I'm just not impressed with your logical arguments. Garbage in, garbage out. You begin by presuming to impose constraints on the origins of the universe when science has not finished telling that story. You assume that what is true of infinite sets applies to the prior states of the universe even when the complete story of the universe is not known. Even if anyone wanted to grant you this point (which I do not) your conclusion is still wildly unsupported. [I suppose you do not think I can ever cross the room either since to do so I would have to traverse an infinite series of halfway points.]

You'd like to conclude that therefore everything owes its existence to something outside of cause of effect, that only what had no beginning could create things which do have a beginning. How do you know such a thing exists or is possible? You infer it by default. How else could it be when we're all wrapped up in these horrible paradoxes?

Let me paraphrase your argument and you can tell me where I have it wrong:

1. Nothing can come from nothing.
2. That is unless something eternal existed before everything else.
3. Everything that is not eternal must have been created from nothing by the eternal something, which implies the eternal something must have the power to make up shit out of nothing.

Step one is falsified if magic genies can make things out of nothing. It is also falsified if eternal genies can exist who do not owe their existence to prior creator genies.

Step two is wrong if in fact everything that exists is recycled from something that existed before it. Everything is eternal but it changes over time, sometimes quite radically.

Step three begs the question of how anything ever comes out of nothing. Either the "nothing" is more than it seemed (air, microbes, gamma rays) or someone needs to explain how anything at all can be fashioned from absolutely nothing.

You haven't shown that the universe was created by an eternal genie. You have simply argued (poorly) that that is the only possible explanation. If you can't think up anything better than that maybe you should leave it to the adults.