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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 7, 2015 at 5:01 am
(September 7, 2015 at 4:48 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: (September 7, 2015 at 4:44 am)Irrational Wrote: No, it's not been proven that time itself had a beginning.
yes, Stephen Hawkin: "The Beginning of Time" - he himself proved it.
But even if that was the case, no entity, including God, could logically act in any way in the absence of time.
I have news for you. Stephen Hawking is not always going to be right on everything related to the universe.
Did you check the link I posted earlier? That looks like a promising theory.
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 7, 2015 at 12:43 pm
(September 7, 2015 at 4:48 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: (September 7, 2015 at 4:44 am)Irrational Wrote: No, it's not been proven that time itself had a beginning.
yes, Stephen Hawkin: "The Beginning of Time" - he himself proved it.
But even if that was the case, no entity, including God, could logically act in any way in the absence of time. That's silly. Time started when the first particle was formed.
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 8, 2015 at 3:37 pm
(September 7, 2015 at 12:43 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: That's silly. Time started when the first particle was formed.
The first particle being?
How do you know the universe has not always been? The latest science seems to point in that direction.
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 9, 2015 at 2:37 am
(September 7, 2015 at 12:43 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: That's silly. Time started when the first particle was formed.
Either way it had a beginning. And things that have a beginning are usually begotten by a cause.
The original question was, why does God not need a cause? Because He had no beginning.
Not all existence is material. Immaterial things like ideas and information, and even mathematics. These are all immaterial things that have an effect on us, so we know they exist. Logically God could act if He was eternally simple. And that is what all the great theologians have taught that God is eternally simple (i.e. Not made up of any parts/indivisible, and eternal - above space and time.)
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 9, 2015 at 5:18 am
(September 9, 2015 at 2:37 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: (September 7, 2015 at 12:43 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: That's silly. Time started when the first particle was formed.
Either way it had a beginning. And things that have a beginning are usually begotten by a cause.
The original question was, why does God not need a cause? Because He had no beginning.
Not all existence is material. Immaterial things like ideas and information, and even mathematics. These are all immaterial things that have an effect on us, so we know they exist. Logically God could act if He was eternally simple. And that is what all the great theologians have taught that God is eternally simple (i.e. Not made up of any parts/indivisible, and eternal - above space and time.)
In the meantime, they have all been presupposing that a god exists in the first place!
Do ideas, information, mathematics exist, if no human, or conscious being, is around to formulate them? Can M$ Windows exist without a computer?
I wouldn't interpret the current "big bang theory" as placing a beginning in time and space, but rather as a limit to our ability to perceive beyond... In other words, we don't know if there was a before, nor does it seem to be knowable that there was a before.
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 9, 2015 at 5:33 am
(This post was last modified: September 9, 2015 at 5:37 am by robvalue.)
"Mathematics" doesn't literally exist, it is an abstract concept.
I've seen this false equivocation a lot. If "god" exists in the same way, then it only actually exists in the form of images in people's brains. Images in brains may map to some existent object, they may map to an abstract concept consistent with reality or they map to nothing in reality. At best you're equating "god" with the laws of the universe.
As it happens, pure mathematics is not even required to map to anything in reality. All that is required is internal consistency. Whether or not it has any practical application is irrelevant. In the same way, you could come up with an abstract notion of an internally consistent god, and it might have nothing to do with reality either.
This form of "existence" is meaningless for something that's meant to have an intelligence, unless you can explain further. We have no experience of any intelligence distinct from a physical body of some sort. We don't know that it's possible. Just saying, "Yeah, well there could be" is not an argument nor is it evidence.
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 9, 2015 at 5:40 pm
23abills of money out of seeminglypocaracas
(September 9, 2015 at 2:37 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: Either way it had a beginning. And things that have a beginning are usually begotten by a cause.
The original question was, why does God not need a cause? Because He had no beginning.
Not all existence is material. Immaterial things like ideas and information, and even mathematics. These are all immaterial things that have an effect on us, so we know they exist. Logically God could act if He was eternally simple. And that is what all the great theologians have taught that God is eternally simple (i.e. Not made up of any parts/indivisible, and eternal - above space and time.)
In the meantime, they have all been presupposing that a god exists in the first place!
Do ideas, information, mathematics exist, if no human, or conscious being, is around to formulate them? Can M$ Windows exist without a computer?
I wouldn't interpret the current "big bang theory" as placing a beginning in time and space, but rather as a limit to our ability to perceive beyond... In other words, we don't know if there was a before, nor does it seem to be knowable that there was a before.
Yes, but the presupposing has no bearing on the arguments I gave and the science I talked about.
We live in the present. The future is full of possibilities. The past is impossible to reverse. How do we change reality in the present? Through our behaviors, and our behaviors are influenced by our values. Values are immaterial. Just like you can print money out of seemingly nothing. MS window existed as a stolen idea before it came into existence as software.
You can say that the Big Bang is the limit of our knowledge. I guess that's acceptable. But other evidence for the existence of God is the immensely huge improbability of life forming on earth given the number of conditions that all need add up to make it possible.. Estimated that there are around 320 of these conditions, with each of their probabilities to be "just right" to support life and prevent the earth to implode, being less than 1%. Adding all of them up gives a probability for there to be life on earth at a staggering 10 to the power of 23. AllThat in a small window of time!
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am
(This post was last modified: September 10, 2015 at 3:37 am by Ronkonkoma.)
(September 9, 2015 at 5:33 am)robvalue Wrote: "Mathematics" doesn't literally exist, it is an abstract concept.
I've seen this false equivocation a lot. If "god" exists in the same way, then it only actually exists in the form of images in people's brains. Images in brains may map to some existent object, they may map to an abstract concept consistent with reality or they map to nothing in reality. At best you're equating "god" with the laws of the universe.
As it happens, pure mathematics is not even required to map to anything in reality. All that is required is internal consistency. Whether or not it has any practical application is irrelevant. In the same way, you could come up with an abstract notion of an internally consistent god, and it might have nothing to do with reality either.
This form of "existence" is meaningless for something that's meant to have an intelligence, unless you can explain further. We have no experience of any intelligence distinct from a physical body of some sort. We don't know that it's possible. Just saying, "Yeah, well there could be" is not an argument nor is it evidence.
Sure Boss, Math is definitely abstract, and uses abstractions but that does not give or take from the question of whether it actually exists or not. Did Einstein actually invent e=mc2? Or did he only recognize it? Are abstractions created by our brains, or recognized by our brains?
And speaking of the brain, we know precious little about what a thought IS. We may very well be like little kids standing in front of a radio set thinking the sound is coming from a small midget inside. Actually, the radio only registers the radio waves, but in order to know that, we have to know about radio waves. In terms of the brain, we don't have that basic knowledge know what a thought is. Values, longing for justice, a sense of purpose in life, freedom, personhood, human rights, responsibilities... are these all produced by our brains? How about collective values? Are they all produced by a giant mega-brain of many humans? Or are they only recognized and sensed?
And the other thing is, the argument is way more complex than just saying "yeah there could be". The argument rests on philosophy, science, history, experience and observation of human behavior, all coming together to form a consistent picture. I can talk about all of these for days.
(September 9, 2015 at 5:18 am)pocaracas Wrote: (September 9, 2015 at 2:37 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: Either way it had a beginning. And things that have a beginning are usually begotten by a cause.
The original question was, why does God not need a cause? Because He had no beginning.
Not all existence is material. Immaterial things like ideas and information, and even mathematics. These are all immaterial things that have an effect on us, so we know they exist. Logically God could act if He was eternally simple. And that is what all the great theologians have taught that God is eternally simple (i.e. Not made up of any parts/indivisible, and eternal - above space and time.)
In the meantime, they have all been presupposing that a god exists in the first place!
Do ideas, information, mathematics exist, if no human, or conscious being, is around to formulate them? Can M$ Windows exist without a computer?
I wouldn't interpret the current "big bang theory" as placing a beginning in time and space, but rather as a limit to our ability to perceive beyond... In other words, we don't know if there was a before, nor does it seem to be knowable that there was a before.
Yes, but the presupposing has no bearing on the arguments I gave and the science I talked about.
We live in the present. The future is full of possibilities. The past is impossible to reverse. How do we change reality in the present? Through our behaviors, and our behaviors are influenced by our values. Values are immaterial. Just like you can print money out of seemingly nothing. MS window existed as a stolen idea before it came into existence as software.
You can say that the Big Bang is the limit of our knowledge. I guess that's acceptable. But other evidence for the existence of God is the immensely huge improbability of life forming on earth given the number of conditions that all need add up to make it possible.. Estimated that there are around 320 of these conditions, with each of their probabilities to be "just right" to support life and prevent the earth to implode, being less than 1%. Adding all of them up gives a probability for there to be life on earth at a staggering 10 to the power of 23. AllThat in a small window of time!
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 10, 2015 at 5:19 am
(September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: Yes, but the presupposing has no bearing on the arguments I gave and the science I talked about.
We live in the present. The future is full of possibilities. The past is impossible to reverse. How do we change reality in the present? Through our behaviors, and our behaviors are influenced by our values. Values are immaterial. Just like you can print money out of seemingly nothing. MS window existed as a stolen idea before it came into existence as software.
You can say that the Big Bang is the limit of our knowledge. I guess that's acceptable. But other evidence for the existence of God is the immensely huge improbability of life forming on earth given the number of conditions that all need add up to make it possible.. Estimated that there are around 320 of these conditions, with each of their probabilities to be "just right" to support life and prevent the earth to implode, being less than 1%. Adding all of them up gives a probability for there to be life on earth at a staggering 10 to the power of 23. AllThat in a small window of time!
Dude, seriously. What is with you theists and the word salads? Half of that first paragraph was Deepak Chopra sayings and the other half was simply untrue. MS Windows didn't "exist" simply because Gates copied the work of that lady at Xerox for a GUI. And none of that has anything to do with the OP. It's just like you decided to connect a string of random phrases.
Every event that has ever happened is statistically improbable. Try calculating the odds that, given our lifetimes and the myriad paths we could have taken in life, that I would meet my wife. Or that the lady who nearly killed me on my motorcycle would have been there, would have turned left the instant she did, or that I wasn't going 5mph faster/slower. Doesn't make it part of some divine plan.
The "just right" argument is bunk, as it presupposes a huge number of things that are massive post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies, or are simply not within our realm of knowledge to presuppose.
An example of the former is that conditions were shaped for life, rather than life being shaped by the conditions that exist.
An example of the latter is your implied claim that this is the only way things could have happened, that life is not going to occur in other forms, given other "settings" of the variables, and that the settings are even variable. None of that is known, nor can be supposed.
If you're going to try the teleological argument, at least present a better version of it. That's the other thing about you amateur apologists; you all show up at these atheism forums like we've never seen your arguments before.
Good grief! 
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
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RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 10, 2015 at 5:45 am
(September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: (September 9, 2015 at 5:33 am)robvalue Wrote: "Mathematics" doesn't literally exist, it is an abstract concept.
I've seen this false equivocation a lot. If "god" exists in the same way, then it only actually exists in the form of images in people's brains. Images in brains may map to some existent object, they may map to an abstract concept consistent with reality or they map to nothing in reality. At best you're equating "god" with the laws of the universe.
As it happens, pure mathematics is not even required to map to anything in reality. All that is required is internal consistency. Whether or not it has any practical application is irrelevant. In the same way, you could come up with an abstract notion of an internally consistent god, and it might have nothing to do with reality either.
This form of "existence" is meaningless for something that's meant to have an intelligence, unless you can explain further. We have no experience of any intelligence distinct from a physical body of some sort. We don't know that it's possible. Just saying, "Yeah, well there could be" is not an argument nor is it evidence.
Sure Boss, Math is definitely abstract, and uses abstractions but that does not give or take from the question of whether it actually exists or not. Did Einstein actually invent e=mc2? Or did he only recognize it? Are abstractions created by our brains, or recognized by our brains? Oh... that slippery slippery slope where abstract ideas become things that actually exist... Where does it end?
Harry Potter?
Darth Vader?
Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Is a water wave something that exists? Or is it just water (let's assume water exists) with a particular coherent behavior which we've come to designate "wave"?
(September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: And speaking of the brain, we know precious little about what a thought IS. We may very well be like little kids standing in front of a radio set thinking the sound is coming from a small midget inside. Actually, the radio only registers the radio waves, but in order to know that, we have to know about radio waves. In terms of the brain, we don't have that basic knowledge know what a thought is. Values, longing for justice, a sense of purpose in life, freedom, personhood, human rights, responsibilities... are these all produced by our brains? How about collective values? Are they all produced by a giant mega-brain of many humans? Or are they only recognized and sensed? Knowing you know little about a given thing should give you the hint required to withdraw judgement, until more accurate information is available.
Unless you want to just speculate... feel free, but be aware that any speculation is just that. Its bearing on reality is usually very slim.
So good of you to correct your earlier blunder in quoting me!
(September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: (September 9, 2015 at 5:18 am)pocaracas Wrote: In the meantime, they have all been presupposing that a god exists in the first place!
Do ideas, information, mathematics exist, if no human, or conscious being, is around to formulate them? Can M$ Windows exist without a computer?
I wouldn't interpret the current "big bang theory" as placing a beginning in time and space, but rather as a limit to our ability to perceive beyond... In other words, we don't know if there was a before, nor does it seem to be knowable that there was a before.
Yes, but the presupposing has no bearing on the arguments I gave and the science I talked about. If the arguments call for a god, then they are presupposing a god.
(September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: We live in the present. The future is full of possibilities. The past is impossible to reverse. How do we change reality in the present? Through our behaviors, and our behaviors are influenced by our values. Values are immaterial. Just like you can print money out of seemingly nothing. MS window existed as a stolen idea before it came into existence as software. Immaterial... sounds like something that's in our minds, but not out of them.
(September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: You can say that the Big Bang is the limit of our knowledge. I guess that's acceptable. But other evidence for the existence of God is the immensely huge improbability of life forming on earth given the number of conditions that all need add up to make it possible.. Estimated that there are around 320 of these conditions, with each of their probabilities to be "just right" to support life and prevent the earth to implode, being less than 1%. Adding all of them up gives a probability for there to be life on earth at a staggering 10 to the power of 23. AllThat in a small window of time!
The fine tuning argument? oh boy... -.-'
How can anyone attribute such probabilities when their sample size is ONE?
hint: they can't - they're making it up - they're supposing things they can't suppose - the argument is flawed at the get go.
But thanks for playing.
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