(October 5, 2021 at 11:49 am)polymath257 Wrote: 1. That a natural law requires a law giver
2. That humans are qualified to recognize design without further testing
3. That an infinite regress is impossible
4. That, even if there is/was a lawgiver for natural laws, that there is only one such
5. That causality makes sense outside of the universe
6. That everything that begins to exist (meaning there was a time when it did not exist) needs to have a cause (applied unevenly, I might add)
7. That having a start means that a thing 'begins to exist' in the sense of the last claim
8. That postulating a lawgiver means that such a lawgiver must actually exist
I can go on, but how about we address these?
1. The existence of natural laws is vastly more expected under theism than under atheism.
2. Humans act on the appearances all the time. If we don't act on the appearance of design, we are being hypocritical. This is a direct application of the principle of credulity: we should consider, a priori, that what seems to be so is indeed so.
3. Only an infinite regress of actual causes using some notion of time can be proven to be impossible. I already explained why repeatedly: an eternal past never elapses and therefore there cannot be a present.
In your model presenting an infinite past and in which you get to choose any two moments, you are already assuming your conclusion, circular. Recall that a wrong proposition can imply a true proposition. Therefore, a wrong model may not necessarily yield a logical contradiction. So, I don't have to find a contradiction in your model, in which you assumed what you're trying to prove.
4. Occam's razor: we shouldn't posit multiple entities unless we have a good reason.
5. Rejecting causality means that things can pop into existence for no reason....
6. This is simply a restatement of causality. And no, it's not applied unevenly, because God purportedly didn't begin to exist.
7. I already explained the meaning of began to exist, which doesn't require time. Causation can be simultaneous.
8. The existence of a lawgiver is vastly more probable than not given the observation: "natural laws exist".