(March 23, 2015 at 6:19 am)Delicate Wrote: "Reality, ie 'the total set of everything that exist,' includes as a member 'entity x with properties P.'"…This is a claim about reality.
Delicate, as a junior member, you need to understand something about Esquilax; he is an excellent debater. His bag of tricks plays on very specific modern reworkings of long-standing philosophical arguments. If you are not clear about the historic meaning of certain terms his distractions will trip you up.
So, I feel it necessary to tell you that the William Lane Craig also forgets the neo-Scholastic underpinnings of cosmological arguments. Without those underpinnings, certain ambiguities get incorporated that atheists exploit.
You are correct in so far as the argument concerns the nature of reality taken as a whole, which should not be confused with physical reality. The pre-Socratics started this inquiry and while many would dismiss their arguments, they provide an important and necessary context which I will summarize below while addressing Esquilax’s argument of convenience.
(March 23, 2015 at 2:32 am)Esquilax Wrote: Not a one of the theists who seem to think Kalam is so cogent and relevant has ever even approached making an argument that the category of uncreated things has anything in it at all.
So the question is whether or not the category of uncreated has anything in it at all. Let’s unpack that. First we are talking about something that actually exists. Next, this hypothetical being does not depend on anything else for its existence.
No one can say that reality does not exist. Nor is it possible to say that reality is anything other than one thing, since nothing other than reality exists. The ancients called this the All. The All cannot be created from nothing because nothing does not exist. Nor could the All have been created by another because then the All would no longer be one thing. Thus we have something uncreated that must exist: the All.
Further arguments build upon this certainty from which it becomes clear that the All must be, unlike the physical universe and the things in it, in full actuality. Right now I do not have time to fully present on those demonstrations. For now it is sufficient to show that Esquilax is simply wrong; the category of uncreated things does contain at least one thing: the All.
(March 22, 2015 at 8:14 pm)watchamadoodle Wrote: What would be an example of a real object? I can't think of a real object except the entire universe. The objects within the universe are simply arbitrary abstractions IMO.Wow! I do not think I have ever heard on such an honest profession of radical nominalism.
