(June 12, 2015 at 11:51 am)Anima Wrote: 3. Statement = You have not demonstrated that God exists. Response = I have given sufficient support for the logical inference of a single cause of everything which was not caused by anything, which may further be falsified by the discovery of an infinite regressive causal chain (outside your window ).You have not demonstrated that the universe was caused to exist, or that there's any framework which supports an uncaused cause. To paraphrase: "Infinity is scary and philosophicaly icky, so it cannot be the case that causality regresses infinitely."
P1. Nothing can exist as an infinite regress.
P2. Causes exist
C1. Causes cannot exist as an infinite regress
Quote:4. Statement = You have not demonstrated God is the best fit for the reality we observe. Response = God does not need to be the best fit as this is an argument to redundancy, whereby if something is not the most efficient fit than it must not exists as a fit (your extra kidney, lung, and fingers would disagree). By argument of definition and valuation it may be stated that for the definition or valuation of anything to have meaning it must appeal to an objective determinate. (like Einstein's nothing goes faster than the speed of light which serves as an objective determinate for the speed of any given thing.) As the cause without cause is not predicated upon anything else the cause without cause shall serve as the essential determinateAny five year-old will immediate demonstrate that all this is word salad, with an obvious question: "If God made everything, what made God?" And your answer is "There must be one thing which was never caused to exist." Well, fine, then why wouldn't that be the Universe, or whatever larger framework might exist in which Universes are arranged? Why would it be a sentient entity?
Quote:5. Statement = You have not demonstrated your specific religion is superior to the others. Response = This was never my intention. Though I did give explanation of how religions and moral schemes may be evaluated, eliminated, and amalgamated. This structure should suffice to demonstrate as specified should we follow it to its conclusion. I worked through this process long ago but did not put it in this thread at the risk of being pedantic Suffice to say that in keeping with bullets 3 and 4 above one quickly comes to a single rather than multiple deity, whose qualities are defined by the maxims (conscious become omniscience; mortal become immortal) and pure perfections.Okay.
Quote:6. Statement = I do not need to provide evidence of my assertion of reality. Response = In this regard we have made extensive argument in regards to the quality of evidence. To which I have stated the implicit circumstantial empirical evidence should suffice in accordance with synthetic apriori and aposteriori (as provided in 3 and 4). From comments made in opposition it would seem the threshold of evidence set is to be explicit direct empirical evidence constituting analytic aposteriori (argued to not even be possible by Kant), as analytic apriori would be a tautology to which criticism would be it is begging the question. Hence it is argued the threshold of evidence being required by those in opposition cannot be met by anyone or anything to the exclusion of their own person and all information as yet considered knowledge. However, if the threshold is in keeping with that which permits knowledge of our own person and all other information the threshold then becomes one of implicit circumstantial empirical evidence by which inference may be made in accordance with bullets 3 and 4 above.If this was chili, my spoon would stand up in it.
If you have to start a semantic argument about what "really, really" constitutes evidence, then let me simplify it: if you want me to accept the idea of God as an existent entity, you will need to cause me to have some experience which accords with that idea. This is the real standard of evidence: it must resolve any question posed to my world view. In this case, you've posed the question of cosmogony, and must provide evidence for your answer: a deity. But nothing you've said, and nothing you have shown me, accords better with a world view which includes God than one which does not.