Why Something Rather Than Nothing?

[Mister Agenda]

You seem to have a decent case that omniscience is impossible there, I give you that. But God doesn't HAVE to assert that he's God, he can accept it as tentatively true for practical purposes while still recognizing that he can't really know.

Accepting as tentatively true while recognizing it might be otherwise....is essentially an assertion in my opinion.

as·ser·tion/əˈsərSH(ə)n/
noun
a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief.

Your opinion seems to be largely dependent on what will best serve the cause of making you feel like you're winning an argument in the moment that you say it.

[Whateverist]

To the OP: Why something instead of nothing? Why not?

[bennyboy]

I'm sorry, this is still textbook ad hominem. It doesn't matter if he's a conman. It doesn't matter what he stated about his way of reaching his ideas, and it doesn't matter if he's dishonest. What matters is the content of the ideas he's gone on record with, preferably in his very many formal debates.

It absolutely does matter how he reaches his ideas, when that method infects his every idea with inexcusable bias. Presuppositionalism turns every argument into mere pretense on the part of the arguer; we are no longer getting a full account of all the facts, and a conclusion based upon them, but instead a collection of either facts or misrepresentations that lead exclusively to a predrawn conclusion, regardless of accuracy.

You keep using this fancy word: presuppositionalism. But to me, it sounds a lot like "the unkown accords with the world view I already have." Do you know exactly how the mind comes into being? No. Do you assume (and vehemently argue) that it must come only from matter? Is that presuppositionalism? Would you argue that all the rational and logical arguments in support of the brain creating mind are invalid if the debater says, "No matter what happens, I'll be arguing that mind is created by matter" ? No. That's that guy's world view, and you naturally expect him to strongly argue for its validity.

Doesn't the fact that a given position makes its holder stop actually debating seem kinda relevant, in an argument?

Not if you get to be the judge of whether they're still debating or not. If that were allowed, every debate in the world would last for exactly one sentence.

The reason to reject an argument is, and only can be, because the argument is demonstrably false or poorly supported. And that's an easy enough claim to make about Craig's arguments-- why bother with the biographical metacommentary?

Gee, I don't know: if a guy started off his argument with the statement "everything I'm about to say is a lie," would that level of metacommentary be germane to the argument he's about to make? Why should a slightly slimier version of precisely that sentiment be any less relevant?

If Craig said that, I will eat my keyboard.

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Accepting as tentatively true while recognizing it might be otherwise....is essentially an assertion in my opinion.

An assertion is the couching of an idea as though it is fact-- i.e. that you are so confident about your idea that you have concluded that it represents reality.

So, if I say, "God created the Universe, and he loves us all," that is an assertion. I didn't say "what if," or "it seems to me," or "Hey, I have this interesting way of thinking about life, what do you think?"

[Heywood]

Accepting as tentatively true while recognizing it might be otherwise....is essentially an assertion in my opinion.

as·ser·tion/əˈsərSH(ə)n/
noun
a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief.

Your opinion seems to be largely dependent on what will best serve the cause of making you feel like you're winning an argument in the moment that you say it.

If a being says(out loud or during an interior monologue), "I am God".....that is a statement of fact or belief(in this case belief as I have shown). It is an assertion by the definition you have provided. If it is not an assertion....then what is it?

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Accepting as tentatively true while recognizing it might be otherwise....is essentially an assertion in my opinion.

An assertion is the couching of an idea as though it is fact-- i.e. that you are so confident about your idea that you have concluded that it represents reality.

So, if I say, "God created the Universe, and he loves us all," that is an assertion. I didn't say "what if," or "it seems to me," or "Hey, I have this interesting way of thinking about life, what do you think?"

In philosophy assertion is a complicated concept. People write entire papers on what is an assertion. The jist of it is....if it is a statement based on belief....it is an assertion. If it is a statement based on actual knowledge....it is a fact.

[bennyboy]

In philosophy assertion is a complicated concept. People write entire papers on what is an assertion. The jist of it is....if it is a statement based on belief....it is an assertion. If it is a statement based on actual knowledge....it is a fact.

No, this leads to nasty semantics, as many or most Christians will immediately claim that their beliefs represent knowledge, and many philosophers will claim that nothing is knowable in an absolute sense, and that all statements of fact therefore represent beliefs. The problem is that some people will take this an an excuse no longer to distinguish between good ideas and fanatastical fictions.

If you say, "God created the universe," you are stating what you consider knowledge about cosmogony. Whether you really know this, or whether it is an unfounded belief, is irrelevant. Your intellectual state has nothing to do with it-- it's your language, in stating that something is so. In English, we have plenty of language designed for communicating intent. And the rule is, if you say X is Y, it will be taken as a statement of what you consider to be fact. If this is not true, you must simply say, "In my opinion. . . " or "I believe that. . ." or "It seems to me that. . ."

[Esquilax]

You keep using this fancy word: presuppositionalism.

That is because there is a branch of christian apologetics called presuppositional apologetics, wherein the central tenet is, well, the consistently held presupposition that the christian god is real and the bible divinely inspired. William Lane Craig has, in both his books and speaking engagements, affirmed that he holds to this presupposition, that in circumstances in which evidence comes into conflict with his faith, it is his faith that must take precedent. In fact, when asked whether literally traveling back in time and seeing Jesus' corpse not rising from the grave would demonstrate to him that his faith is wrong, Craig responded that no, it would not. Even if he could actually sit there, and see the body of his messiah remain a dead body, if he could confirm that christianity was untrue, he would remain a christian.

He says he has something called the "self authenticating witness of the holy spirit," that means his religion is absolutely true even when it's not.

But to me, it sounds a lot like "the unkown accords with the world view I already have." Do you know exactly how the mind comes into being? No. Do you assume (and vehemently argue) that it must come only from matter? Is that presuppositionalism? Would you argue that all the rational and logical arguments in support of the brain creating mind are invalid if the debater says, "No matter what happens, I'll be arguing that mind is created by matter" ? No. That's that guy's world view, and you naturally expect him to strongly argue for its validity.

It's not a matter of arguing from a worldview, because to a rational, non-presuppositional mind the addition of contradictory evidence is sufficient to change that worldview. That's not the thing I take issue with, and it's also not the thing I've been pointing out here. What I've been saying is that WLC has stated proudly that he will continue holding to his worldview in the face of conclusive proof that it is false, and that he has a history, both in practice and word, of manipulating or outright ignoring facts to conform to that worldview.

I'm not talking about merely arguing strongly for the position you hold, Benny. I'm talking about an active campaign of misinformation that stems from a staunch, faith based pre-drawn conclusion, and refuses all correction, even when experts in the fields being discussed- up to and including the people who wrote the paper that Craig is referencing- say otherwise.

Not if you get to be the judge of whether they're still debating or not. If that were allowed, every debate in the world would last for exactly one sentence.

I woulda thought a debate would include a two way conversation, not merely one guy talking at another while ignoring everything that doesn't agree with him already.

If Craig said that, I will eat my keyboard.

He didn't say that, he said the slimy version. But the fact is, he did utter the sentiment. That's my point; at what level do we allow the prior statements, made outside of the context of the current argument, to influence our reaction to the argument in question?

[Mister Agenda]

as·ser·tion/əˈsərSH(ə)n/
noun
a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief.

Your opinion seems to be largely dependent on what will best serve the cause of making you feel like you're winning an argument in the moment that you say it.

If a being says(out loud or during an interior monologue), "I am God".....that is a statement of fact or belief(in this case belief as I have shown). It is an assertion by the definition you have provided. If it is not an assertion....then what is it?

Depends on how much conviction is behind it. I posited that God wouldn't HAVE to have a conviction that he is the supreme being. Unless you are saying that God DOES have to have such a conviction, I don't see what your issue is. If you ARE saying that, I'd love to hear your explanation for why it must be true.

In philosophy assertion is a complicated concept. People write entire papers on what is an assertion. The jist of it is....if it is a statement based on belief....it is an assertion. If it is a statement based on actual knowledge....it is a fact.

Why don't you go to the philosophy section and start a thread on it? In normal discussion it's best to use the plain meaning of words. And your fixation on this term is not doing a whit to advance the discussion. We're not using philosophical jargon here, we're speaking English, and the ususal definition suffices for what we're trying to communicate.

[Heywood]

Why don't you go to the philosophy section and start a thread on it? In normal discussion it's best to use the plain meaning of words. And your fixation on this term is not doing a whit to advance the discussion. We're not using philosophical jargon here, we're speaking English, and the ususal definition suffices for what we're trying to communicate.

We are in the philosophy section.....and I have been giving a lot of thought about starting a separate thread here about the differences between knowledge, belief, and certitude. You might see such a thread in the near future.

[bennyboy]

The semantics about what an assertion really is make a great red herring, don't they?

Whatever you want to call it when you say something is true, but don't want to bother demonstrating that it is ACTUALLY true, the fact is that you will lose the ear of your audience. You've made statements about the nature of reality and of its relationship to this God idea that you have. It is up to you to make a credible argument, in order that I may also adopt the God idea as representing reality. And if I can see that you don't intend to do this, then I will wander off to watch Judge Judy reruns, or to redoing the grout in the bathroom or whatever. Eventually, everyone else will do the same, the thread will fizzle out, and it will be replaced by commentaries about people's favorite cat memes.

This is the nature of things-- that semantics must eventually give way to actual ideas, and that those ideas have to have sufficient support. And that's not the case with the God idea.

So far as I can tell, there's no reason to argue for the God idea except that you happen already to have it, and don't want to go through the psychological work of identifying it as fantasy and letting it go. This make sense in terms of efficiency-- it takes effort to support the God idea in the face of contrary evidence and even simple logic, but it may take even MORE effort for you to do the mental housekeeping to let it go, so you stick to your guns. But I think this is futile-- the God idea cannot stand, and you are wasting your energy needlessly. It's such an easy thing, to read the Bible and say, simply as a five year-old, "Mommy, that just doesn't make SENSE." OR we could debate in an entire thread what it really means to make an assertion, a tap-dance which might allow one to state facts while still managing cleverly to avoid the BOP.

[LostDays]

I'm just gonna leave this here! http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_holt_why_do...t#t-823911

Flip side of the coin asking the same question now.

Why you should care, and I hope you do care. The Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that "Those who don't wonder about the contingency of their existence or the contingency of the worlds existence are mentally deficient" -- That's a little harsh.. but still!! -- Jim Holt on his opening comments.