(July 4, 2012 at 1:32 pm)CliveStaples Wrote:(July 4, 2012 at 1:23 pm)Skepsis Wrote: The other reason your hypothetical fails is because a perfect circle could form due to natural phenomina, or chance. After all, this is a large world we are talking about, right?
Man, now you won't ever make any inferences? If you see a bear, will you infer that there's a bear? After all, you might be crazy, or in the Matrix! You have a strange commitment to ignorance for someone so supposedly devoted to reason and science.
You are the one getting into the deeeeep abstracts here, not me. I simply suggested that the circle could have began natually. That is, until you defined in your next example, that no such beginning could have occured. You are digging deep into that bottomless pit of a brain to try to find a possible hypothetical world where you wouldn't have to demonstrate God before you demonstrate that he created something.
First reason your second, more abstract (and immensely unlikely), hypothetical fails is because it assumes absolute knowledge on the part of the being doing the reasoning. That they know for certain that the only logically possible way for B to occur is because of A.
Next reason is that your example is too abstract to have any impact in any real world scenario. You might be right in the distant, abstract world where there is an omniscient being who knows of this A-B scenario but in this world you are way too far past applicable for your answer to be considered.
My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true.
Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity.
-Bertrand Russell
Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity.
-Bertrand Russell