The Problem with Christians

[athrock]

You are right, Jorm. But does this muffin analogy actually damage the overall argument? Or is it generally useful? 

If you were walking alone in the woods and you came upon black metal box with hinges and a padlock in the middle of the trail, would your first thought be like that of Bertrand Russell, "Well, locked black boxes like this just are, and that's all there is to it"? Or would you assume implicitly that someone made the box, locked it, and placed it in the path?

And if the box can be presumed to have a maker, why not something larger...like a house, for instance? Or an aircraft carrier? Or a planet or even the universe itself? Does the size of the thing in question really change our willingness to conceive of its maker?

You're all over the map with your argument.  This black box analogy has nothing to do with the Kalam style argument you were making.  And since I wasn't complaining of a composition fallacy, your concerns about the size of the object are unrelated to the complaint given.  The fallacy in the Kalam argument noted is equivocation, and none of what you've written addresses that.

Jorm, I do not know your education or credentials. I have none that are relevant. However, I'm very confident that the numerous Christian philosophers who DO employ the Kalam Argument have sterling credentials, and they're not backing away from using the Kalam because of anyone's charge of "equivocation".

So, no, I'm not cowed in the least by your comments here. However, I'm in a good mood today, so if you care to provide a link to the website which you think does a reasonable job debunking ( ) the Kalam, I will give it a look.

See? I'm willing to learn.  

And how reasonable is that conjecturing, Jorm? Pretty good? Yes.  

Without some form of verification, it's as useless as conjecturing that something can come from nothing, which is an equally likely alternative.   (Which is to say the likelihood is unknown.)

We live in the real world, Jorm. Things don't just pop into existence from nothing. If you think otherwise, please support your views with evidence.

You're dancing around the issue: if something (real, physical, material) exists, then everything that is necessary for its existence must also exist.

If you think otherwise, demonstrate an example.

It's funny how you want verification of an alternative hypothesis, yet require none for your own.  That's special pleading.  When you can provide independent attestation to your abduction, then you can demand that I do likewise.

So, IOW, you have squat.  

I'm not arguing for "created souls"; I'm arguing for an uncreated, necessary, Intelligent Designer who must have existed outside of space before they were created.

You're arguing for a supernatural basis of design, namely that the human designer is a spirit, and thus not subject to the constraints of evolution.  

Yep. You're quick, Jorm...I've always like that about you.  

I would say, however, that God could create the laws of physics, gravity, evolution, what have you...and live by them or within their constraints. And He could also intervene from time to time by oh, gee...walking on water or raising the dead or ensouling a non-human species with a human soul for the first time ever (think "Adam" here).

That would make the parallel between human design and God achieved design a suitable analogy.  Without that, you've got a dissimilarity in your analogy between the thing being analogized and the analogizee.  That makes your design argument a false analogy.  And as noted, your argument for why an intelligent designer who existed outside of time and space is doubly flawed in that the argument for a cause rests on an equivocation, and the nature of the cause rests on an unsupported abduction.

Wow. That's a lot of fancy words, Jorm. To be honest, I'm not sure I can ever untangle them.

So, I'll just stick to plainer language: If there was a point at which space and time did not exist and if they could not create themselves from nothing, then that which DID create them must have pre-existed them both.

Now, if you wish to specify EXACTLY what the equivocation is, I might be able to get my head around that. No promises, though.