Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[R00tKiT]

@Jehanne tried to take the same sophistic path out by suggesting the no boundary proposal, which turned out to be a description of how the universe began. @polymath257 shamelessly tried to find an alternative to classical logic and proposed a defunct interpretation of QM. And it turned out (Flash news  ) that classical logic actually describes the mathematical structure of QM perfectly well.

What a silly board of sophists.

Well, then, good riddance.  But, while you exit the door, here is an essay that you ought to read, at least if you want to understand why many of Us (and, indeed, many to most scientists) are atheists:

Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Most physicists believed in the luminiferous aether, too. Have fun arguing from authority, if that makes you feel comfortable.

It doesn't matter what I would define perfection like, only that both of us believe that a things attributes are not strictly limited to what it's cause has or had to give, that things can have attributes that their causes don't - in clear and immediate violation of your asserted rule.

Well, surely, people can design cars, and cars have attributes that people don't. When you look at it more carefully, all we did when designing a car was mental operations on existing matter. A car is the sum of its mechanical components, which in turn are merely an assembly of different materials.

So, the set {human beings+existing matters and materials+knowledge of mechanical engineering+factories} yields a car. And my rule applies, again, on this entire set giving a car.

Congratulations on forgetting the context of the discussion and trammeling headlong into an irrelevant semantic argument.  The question at issue is whether the universe began to exist in the sense the term is used in the cosmological argument which requires that there be a some thing and some when prior to the existence of the universe.  The Hawking-Hartle proposal, as stated, may, depending upon your interpretation, describe a beginning of the universe but not in the sense employed in the cosmological argument in that it required a cause -- and it can only be considered to have begun to exist in that sense by positing a frame outside it in which beginning has meaning.  No external frame exists with Hawking-Hartle and so there is no before the universe in the No Boundary Proposal, and so it did not begin in any meaningful sense wrt the cosmological argument as the way in which it began satisfies the definition of an uncaused cause.  But thank you for demonstrating that you have nothing better to offer than warmed-over sophistries like that of William Lane Craig.  At least it's better than your argument from the dictionary.  And as noted, all that I am proposing is that it is coherent to speak of a third alternative, something you've yet to rebut with anything but moronic arguments about the meaning of words.

Okay, I think I understand better what you're confused about. This proposal says that time began together with the universe. But time - I assume you already know- is a dimension of the universe, of the spacetime, it's not some independent frame or some nebulous existence that accompanies the universe, it is a building block of the universe. 

With that said, we can define a time frame allowing us to define a beginning more clearly: any point in this time frame corresponds to an event. The universe's beginning is simply an event, like any other, along this time frame, if we assume, for example, that other events preceded it, then each of them correspond to different consecutive points along our time frame, etc. 

But this is a purely semantic matter, why do you think that the fact that time began renders the word "begin" meaningless??? After all, you're already conceding that time began, and that this sentence in bold is coherent, well, so did the universe..... 

And, even if that were not the case, as noted, it is not necessary for the Hawking-Hartle hypothesis to be satisfactory for it to show that the idea of an uncaused cause is possible in the case of the universe without directly entailing a contradiction;

How do you get from the Hawking-Hartle hypothesis to the uncaused cause..............?

If indeed it in fact is not a third possibility, you need something better than claiming that two nebulous concepts are in some undefined sense each other's negation or the pitiful word games surrounding the meaning of beginning that you've employed here.

Come on, @Angrboda, you can do better than that. A universe either began or did not begin, these are not word games or empty semantics. I am walking you through the most basic rule of thought, without which no discussion is possible.

I am not trying to gotcha you here. I am going to be very charitable and assume you accept these basic rules of thoughts, and that you're just confused by some proposals in theoretical physics that seem to contradict them.

1) Show that there is no coherent alternative to beginning to exist in the relevant sense or being past eternal; or,

I can't demonstrate a basic law of thought. It's called law of thought for a reason, we refer to it instead of bickering about it.

You're asking for a demonstration of an axiomatic rule....

2) Show that you can demonstrate that God is necessary without reference to Kalam.

Sure, choose any traditional argument about God and we can discuss it all day. What do you think about the moral argument? Even Kant, who rejected all traditional arguments for theism, acknowledges that God is necessary for moral order. Conscience reveals some kind of a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, and thus point to a lawgiver. In other words, a lawgiver is necessary.