(December 12, 2013 at 7:15 pm)Lion IRC Wrote: You can evaluate the Cosmological Argument premises in terms of how plausible is the NEGATION of those premises.
Actually you can't, and we have the philosopher David Hume for that important philosophical breakthrough, but we'll get to that in a mo'. Heck, Kalam's first premise ignores that there ARE in fact quantum mechanical effects with no preceding cause: atomic decay, virtual particle pair production, proton decay, etc.
Quote:What are the possible negations of the first premise and how plausible are they in comparison?
*That things/substance DO sometimes spontaneously come into existence. (And logically, therefore, do also sometimes spontaneously cease to exist)
*That no substance (matter/energy/information/biology/consciousness/space/time) ever comes into existence.
*That there is no such thing as “nothing” or “non-existence”.
The first negation is logically possible (a la Hume), so you can't rule it out a priori.
As for the second negation, what do you mean by 'comes into existence'?
And as for the third, that's quite possible. Nothingness is, in my view, an incoherent concept.
Quote:If you really want to argue for;
- an unintended,
- uncaused,
- past-eternal,
- perpetual motion,
- unguided
Universe…
- where nothing new is ever ‘created’,
- and which isn’t really expanding, because there is no “nothingness” into which it can expand,
- and where everything that can happen HAS already happened over and over an infinite number of times, (think Groundhog Day movie multiplied by infinity)
…knock yourself out.
Wow, you are strikingly ignorant on Big Bang cosmology if that's what you think the negation of the first premise entails. Firstly, it's entirely disingenuous of you to complain about an uncaused universe. YOU don't believe God has a cause for his existence, so there's hypocrisy there.
Secondly, past eternality is not entailed by rejecting the first premise or Kalam as a whole, In fact, many physicists (Stephen Hawking, for example) are atheists and do NOT hold to the past eternality of the universe, because they think the evidence supports time 'beginning'.
Thirdly, where the hell did you get perpetual motion from? That's a non sequitur.
Intention and guidance are red herrings here that literally have nothing to do with this and don't even make sense as objections.
The only sense in which we observe things to be created are as reformulations of pre-existing material.
That has no impact on the expansion of the universe. It isn't expanding into anything else, but into itself. In other words, the space itself is expanding. And you can't expand 'into' nothingness, that's incoherent. That literally means it isn't expanding into anything.
That is not entailed by anything to do with Kalam or Big Bang Cosmology. Seriously dude, go learn some shit; you're embarrassing yourself.
Quote:And while you’re at it you can throw away all those now-meaningless concepts such as;
*Singularity – the big bang happens repeatedly and inevitably. Yawn.
That's not what a singularity is. Many scientists think (rightly in my view) that the singularity conclusion simply shows a problem with their theoretical models, which we already know they possess. Yawn.
Quote:*Abiogenesis – biology is an illusion and there never was an “origin” or genesis.
Perhaps you should actually pay attention. The only empirical suppport we have is for creatio ex materia, so abiogenesis is perfectly compatible here. Again, do you know anything or do you just like straw manning?
Quote:*Sentience – Relax, it’s just the chemicals in your brain just doing what they always do.
"Relxas, it's just chemicals in your brain" which underwent billions of years of alteration, resulting in a complex system we call life, of which we are specifically adapted to analyzing and accurately predicting the future.
Quote:*Evolution – Nope. We haven’t come from anywhere and we aren’t going anywhere.
What are you talking about dude? Don't understand evolution either? Surprise.
