Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[polymath257]

If there were no physical laws, there would be no causality at all.

This only means that causality is a necessary condition of physical laws. It doesn't mean it is a physical law per se.
I will again ask you to provide some reference citing causality itself as a physical law.

No, it is exactly the other way around: causality depends on the existence of natural laws.

For there to *be* a designer takes enough structure and orderliness that some sort of physical laws (or laws governing the behavior of the designer) are required. So the most fundamental laws *cannot* be designed, but must be uncaused.

As I said earlier, all physical laws are descriptive, they merely describe the inner workings of a universe. They have ZERO explanatory power of the universe's existence.

I think you are wrong here. They describe the workings of the universe, but to say it is the 'inner' workings, you must assume there is something outside of the universe. That amounts to either a multiverse or some other universe, which must have its own physical laws.

The *ultimate* laws *cannot* be caused. That is because if they are caused, there is some law that describes the process of that causality, and *that* law would be more fundamental.

So, your conclusion that laws are uncaused is simply ridiculous. Think about the game of chess, the fact that chess pieces can only move according to very precise rules doesn't mean they are uncaused, someone created the game. The rules of chess simply describe how the game should be played and have no independent existence.

Now, if we picture the universe as some giant chessboard where the laws of physics are analogous to the rules of chess, our scientific theories are merely the formulation of these rules, they still warrant an originator of the chess game....

In other words, laws point to a lawgiver, it's that simple.

But the physical laws are NOT like the rules of chess. The rules of chess are arvbitrary and up to a person to make them up. They do not reflect any actual properties of the pieces, but are merely conventions for how humans play the game.

In contrast, natural lws have to do with the actual properties of the objects described: mass, charge, spin, etc. They are NOT simply conventions (proscriptive) like human laws or rules of a game. They are descriptive of how things actually behave.

No, it does NOT follow that the universe is eternal, just that the physical laws, time, space, matter, and energy are co-existent. It is *possible* that all are of limited duration. of course, it is also *possible* that they are all eternal (infinite in duration). We just don't know.

Aquinas gave the trivial reason for why there can't be a universe with an infinite duration hundreds of years ago: We are here, which means that there can't be an eternal past.

A flawed argument also used by Craig. It fails because of a lack of understanding of the nature of infinity and the non-contradictory aspects of infinite regress.

Yes, I think an actual infinite regress is possible. There is nothing contradictory about an actual infinity (in spite of what Aristotle and Aquinas thought).

Your god proposition is neither self-evident

I am going to ask you again once:

Do you think the following proposition : There are infinitely many prime numbers.

1) Is falsifiable ?
2) Is experimentally verifiable ?
3) Requires empirical evidence ?

These are Y/N questions.

I'll answer. Noe of the above. it is also dependent on the assumptions of mathematics. Which rules of math actually apply to our universe can only be determined based on observation.[/quote]