Disproving Odin - An Experiment in arguing with a theist with Theist logic

[Amarok]

Life never increases in life without a source, and life get's spiritual life from spiritual life. If the source of life which in it's essence is spiritual is limited, then the path towards perfection would be impossible for it and for any living being.

And if an absolute perfect judgement didn't exist, then nothing can have proper measured spiritual value, for example your personality would not be an accurate objective reality.

And if absolute perfect judgment exists, it's the highest form of living judgment and hence life and love, and hence power and sight, and hence knowledge and wisdom, and so on and so forth.

And that cannot but be one singular reality, since diverse aspects would make it imperfect, and if his infinite aspects weren't in reality one attribute of sheer perfection, and oneness, they would all lack infinite attributes at infinite absolute level and hence be a paradox to call them attributes of the perfect being.

Hence God and the Source of all life is One Sheer Singular perfection.

You welcome.

What the ever-loving fuck, MK?  Do you think up this shit on the toilet?

---

This is absurd.

You included a quote from Upshaw, why none from Branham? No matter, I'll provide the quote for you.

Now, to you crippled people. There isn’t any of you here as bad off as Congressman Upshaw. He was sixty-six years crippled, wheeled in a wheelchair, laid on beds, helped out and went with crutches. I never seen him or heard of him in my life, and God knows that’s true. And here the man is tonight, standing before you, perfectly whole. See?

- 51-0719  Who Hath Believed Our Report? -  Rev. William Marrion Branham

I’m not sure why you think the above quote by Branham invalidates the contents of the quote I posted up before it.  No matter, though.  I’ve got plenty of quotes from Branham.  Read on.

Upshaw was crippled for 66 years... Fact!

Upshaw was bed ridden... Fact!

Upshaw was in a wheelchair... Fact!

Upshaw was on crutches... Fact!

Are you being obtuse and ignoring context on purpose?  

http://en.believethesign.com/index.php/C...man_Upshaw

Additionally, there exists third party testimony that Upshaw was seen faking his crutches, which corroborates the notion that he was exaggerating the seriousness of his disability for Branham’s purposes.

So who is lying, Huggy?  Branham or Upshaw?  Or, are you lying for Jesus?

First of all Upshaw sustained his injury 36 years before Branham was even born, and this picture taken from his wikki page taken in 1919... Branham would have been 10 years old.

I’m not sure what your point is here.  As I said; you’ve been fooled.

Yay Huggies being stubborn and clinging to a position till the end .

[SteveII]

This is really getting old. This is like to 9th time I have explained this in this thread and like three times to you. 

Plain and simple: Reasoning gives us that some sort of causal principle is an objective feature of all reality. Not everything has a material cause (even within the universe). Everything has a efficient cause (seems to be the bare basic level of cause). The universe is something. It must have at the very least a bare basic cause (efficient cause). Want the fuller explanation? address my answer to you in  https://atheistforums.org/post-1717655.html#pid1717655

* * *

There is no category error because only you are limiting the premise to be material things. There are a large number of things that do no have material causes:

1. The thing that makes you "you".
2. Mathematical objects.
3. Ideas, novels, and symphonies
4. Language
5. Classes, properties, descriptions

Lest you forget what a material cause is, it is the thing of which an objects is made. 

This whole argument stems from the same issue I brought up above:

A lot of internet atheist go wrong here and I think it stems from a complete lack of philosophical training. They cannot differentiate between scientific descriptions and concepts that are clearly not science. It is logical positivism/scientism but, ironically, they cannot identify their mistake because they have no philosophical training. Since they cannot identify that component in their worldview, they don't know that it has been dismissed by nearly everyone for more that 50 years. So, it lives on.

I'm sure you are frustrated.  You have at least two category errors.  Whenever this is pointed out to you, you return to the Aristitileon categories of cause which are at least in part the cause of your category error.

No. There is no "category error" unless the premise only applies to one category and not the other. That is not the case here. 

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Just because you can come up with categories, your "category error" charge is nonsense unless there is a category that somehow does not have a causal principle. Is there a category that has no causal principle? 

1. What Do You Mean By Exist?

The first catagory error is equating the existence of physical objects, energy, with the existence of ideas. These are two very different meanings of the word "exist."  To see how different they are, all you have to do is ask where does it exist?  Physical objects have an identifiable location.  Where is my pencil, or where's the dog  are rational questions. Where is the English language? Where is The Pythagorean Theorem?   Or where is Beethoven's Fifth are not.  At best you might say Engish is spoken in these places, or Pythagoras's  Theorim is set out in my math book, or my score of the Fifth is over there on the desk.  But that's only physical places where the ideas are recorded.  They don't exist except as recorded in a brain or someother physical object.  In the sense that your pencil exists, ideas don't exist at all.  It's as if instead of asking for a pencil, you asked for pencilness.

The trouble with talking about the existense of ideas goes beyond the fact that they must be recorded.  To exist they must also be understood by someone.  Consider for example the possibility that if DNA were taken to represent a letter system in Hitite, English, or some language not yet spoken but which will be spoken in the future, that a sequence of DNA somewhere would spell out an intelligible sentence, maybe even a poetic one, such "eyes like liquid fire."   Would you say that that poem existed before someone worked out the "meaning" of that sequence? I wouldn't.  But I would have no trouble saying that the DNA sequence itself existed whether someone sequenced it or not.

The universe potentially poses a third kind of existence.  Where is the universe?  Well, unless there is something outside it, the answer is it's not in a place, it is the collective of all places and things. When we ask where, we are asking where in the universe?  To ask where is the universe is an as odd a question as where is the Pythagorean Theorem.  But unlike the theorem, the universe obviously  has  a physical existence and it's existence is not contingent on someone's knowing about it.

These two or three uses of the word exist are so different that using the word existence to mean both the existence of physical objects and the existence of ideas is a category error.

As you might learn from Neo, your use of the word "existence" is not fully developed. The fact that we can use 'exist' in separate ways does nothing to the KCA because all that meant is that anything that begins to exists (in any senses of the word) has a cause of its existence. 

The universe does not has a special kind of existence. It is a unique object, but that does not require a special category of existence. It either exists or does not exist. Asking "where" is just a nonsensical question that does not apply--much the same as what was it like 12 hours before the big bang. 

For the twelfth time, it is an objective feature of reality that everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. There are no exceptions and it seems that existence without a causal principle is not even coherent. You avoid answering this point because you think there has got to be something wrong with the form argument because you don't like the conclusion. There is nothing wrong with the argument. 

 2.  What Do You Mean By Begin to Exist?

Here's where the multiple meanings of the word exist begin to create real havoc.  You and Craig insist that elephants don't appear out of nothing.  This is because elephants, have, as Aristotle would say, a material cause, i.e. they are made of something.  All physical objects are.  It's not the creation of an elephant that's  startling, it's the creation of the matter out of which the elephant is made. Elephants made out of material not previously existing in the universe would indeed be unprecedented.

This is because all physical objects have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense of the word, that is to say they are made of something.  And when we say something begins to be an elephant we mean that the matter out of which the elephant is made took the form of an elephant.  We don't mean new matter popped into existence and became an elephant.

The universe,  is physical in that it is made of material, meaning that in the Aristitileon sense, it has a material cause.  But you state that unlike the matter that makes up an elephant, the matter that makes up the universe did not exist prior to the universe.  That is an entirely different meaning of to begin to exist.  It is in fact the very kind of beginning to exist that you keep telling me elephants do not ever do.  And  also the very kind of begin to exist appears to occur at the  subatomic level which you say does not actually happen because it is too improbable.

Ideas on the other hand have no material cause in the Aristotelian sense.  That is to say that they have no material substance in that they are not made of anything only recorded in things.  You don't propose that a poem won't suddenly appear in my backyard because poems don't appear anywhere at all.  Poems  don't exist the way elephants do. But even though a poem is not made of something physical, it is created by something physical.  A poem not conceived or recognised by a brain (including artificial brains like computers) would simply not be in any sense of the word to exist.  It comes into being when it is recognized by someone as a poem.

So, just as you have conflated multiple meanings of exist, you have gone on to conflate multiple meanings of  of the phrase "begin to exist."

x begins to exist if and only if x exists at some time t and there is no time t* prior to t at which x exists.

This can be used for ALL real objects and abstract objects. Any further differentiations you want to make about beginning to exist is unnecessary. You seem to want to because you think it makes a difference to the argument. You can't show an exception or even reason into an exception, there is not category error or special pleading. The premise is sound. 

 3. What Do You Mean By Cause?

Not surprisingly using  multiple meanings for exist, and begin to exist leads to multiple kinds of causes for existence.  This is exacerbated by your insistence on using Aristotle's categorisation of causes as the be all end all way to describe cause.  

Aristotle predates Newton by a millennium. Of his terms, formal cause has long since been abandoned. We no longer say that an octave is caused by a 2:1 ratio.  Rather we say that the 2:1 ratio describes the octave.  Ratios do not cause anything.  They do describe the relationship between things.  And although we speak of the purpose for things we no longer talk about a ball having a purpose of getting to the bottom of a ramp. End purpose is only relevant to things created by a sentient being for a purpose.  An extraordinarily small portion of the present shape of things in the universe was formed for a purpose even though most of the objects used by humans were formed by humans for a pupose.  Purpose is an attribute assigned by people, an idea attached to the object as it were.

So, with regard to the types of beginning to exist discussed above, we know all physical objects in the universe which like an elephant are created out existing matter have a material cause (it's definitional). Physical objects at the human scale also have what Aristotle called an agency cause, or a sufficient cause, tellingly, also called a moving cause.  That is to say, an elephant is in it's particular place and in it's particular shape because of forces outside of itself.  In the case of physical objects, like an  elephant or a ball, or a mountain those outside forces are physical forces acting on the physical material that makes up the object. And really it's not a cause  but a myriad of material and moving causes.  

This does not necessarily hold true at the subatomic level where, while everything still is made of something, some particles appear not to be made from preexisting material.  And they appear to move without outside force.  If they have a cause, it's a very different meaning than the cause we mean when we look for the cause of an elephant. It's not even clear if cause is a relevant term.  You could say they have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense but that isn't really more that stating that they physically exist.

If, as you profess, the universe is not made of preexisting material and consists of matter that wasn't previously something else, then it too does not have cause in the way an elephant does.  What kind of cause is it that makes objects appear out of nothing?  

Ideas have no material cause in the Aristitileon sense as they are not made of anything.  They have no moving cause either as they have on material to be acted upon by outside forces.  Yet to the extent they can be said to exist, it is only because they can be recorded in physical objects and understood by physical beings.  They created and maintained by thought.  I suppose you could say they have an end cause.  But they also have a physical cause in that they are created by physical activity in  brains and communicated by physical means.

Again, all that is needed is that everything shows some type of cause. You cannot limit it to a material cause, so you fail to establish a category error or special pleading. This objection fails with the rest of them. 

4. Innapropriately Conflating Different Of Meanings With A Single Term is Category Error.

You have at least two different meanings of exist, at least two meanings of begin to exist, and many meanings of cause used in you proposition.  Saying l mean all of those doesn't solve the category error.

Nope. You unnecessarily created the distinctions, I didn't. Again, no category error because Premise (1) applies to all categories--so I am not treating them differently. 

If I say

All pets pant,
Goldfish are pets
Therefore goldfish pant

The problem is not solved by saying pets includes both dogs and goldfish, and panting includes all forms of breathing whether by mouth or by gills.  When talking about categories animals for purposes of animal physiology pets in an inherently bad category.  And using pant when what you mean is breath, is disingenuous.

The difference between physically existing and the existence of ideas; the difference between the creation of new matter and reforming of existing matter; and the difference between reshaping matter, having ideas and making new matter appear; are too dissimilar to be usefully refered to by the same names in formal proofs.

[Edited for many but probably far from all typos.]

Your little example is an affirming the consequent fallacy. That is not the form of the KCA so I really can't see your point. 

Answer this: are you going to claim that some sort of causal principle is NOT an objective feature of reality and seems absolutely necessary for any existence? Yes or No.

[GrandizerII]

Define "cause" properly. Are we talking "material" or "efficient" or "formal" or "final" or some non-Aristotelian type of cause or a combination of types of causes?

By "cause", I simply mean that it  is contingent or dependent on something else for that existence.  For your Aristotelian  list, then efficient would likely be the closest.  I'm not getting overly complicated, or anything.  It seems to me, that given your other statement, you would necessarily have to agree with the first premise of the KCA.

I can't agree with the premise if it's not even clear to me what is meant by "cause". You say "efficient" and I say "material". If "efficient" then the universe may or may not have a beginning, depending on what is required of an "efficient cause". But if "material" then the universe eternally exists. And if both "efficient and material", well, then, the universe eternally exists in such case also.

[Amarok]

Wow the second Steve says he's done then comes back

[polymath257]

There has been a lot of talk about that in this thread.   If it is false, then the the logic would not follow.  However it is more reasonable to believe that this is true; rather than the opposite.   I find that many atheists scoff at, and make claims about much less,  but things poofing into existence without cause or reason seems to be readily accepted.   I find that for some, it all depends on which side of the argument God is on.

Except that we know that is not the case.

Take a single atom of U235. When will it decay exactly and what causes it to do so?

More precisely, take two U235 atoms and find *any* difference that relates to which will decay first. There is literally no difference between an atom that decays in one minute and the one that decays in a hundred years. No 'countdown' going on. Nothing: they are identical *right now*. But they will decay at different times.

[GrandizerII]

As you might learn from Neo, your use of the word "existence" is not fully developed. The fact that we can use 'exist' in separate ways does nothing to the KCA because all that meant is that anything that begins to exists (in any senses of the word) has a cause of its existence.

I don't know why I have to say this a zillion times, but here goes. Be clear on the definition of each important word being used in the argument before adamantly defending it. What do you mean by "thing"? And what do you mean by "cause"? Because if it includes material cause, then the universe (being defined "as all there is at any time") must be eternal. I have yet to see an argument on your side that debunks the necessity or sufficiency of material causation in all cases of things "beginning to exist". Note that by things, I mean things that exist in the physical/material world (abstract descriptions or conceptions of actual objects are not included because they don't really exist in the same way that physical/material objects exist, and the argument is after all concerned with the non-abstract).

And even if efficient cause could be argued to be "sufficient cause" rather than "material cause" or "efficient cause + material cause", efficient cause need not be a personal agent. The universe itself could be the container of all possible efficient causes.

And this argument assumes the A-theory of time to be true (which is rather problematic as it's not backed by the current science). Under the B-theory of time, "beginning to exist" carries a different meaning, and in this sense, one can "begin to exist" without having an [efficient] cause at all.

So there are various problems with the KCA right from the very start, and I see it as utterly indefensible at this point.

x begins to exist if and only if x exists at some time t and there is no time t* prior to t at which x exists.

This can be used for ALL real objects and abstract objects. Any further differentiations you want to make about beginning to exist is unnecessary. You seem to want to because you think it makes a difference to the argument. You can't show an exception or even reason into an exception, there is not category error or special pleading. The premise is sound.

Steve, the problem with the definition as it is now is that God must, therefore, also have a beginning to its existence. This is why WLC actually adds one more piece to the definition to give God an "out", namely that there must not be a state of affairs in the actual world in which x exists timelessly. The definition also assumes that "begins to exist" is a tensed fact (in other words, the A-theory of time is true, which I repeat is very problematic).

But that aside, we have no experience of anything coming into being at the first point of time, so you can't even argue that it's intuitive that some things began to exist at the first moment of time. If your main defense of premise 1 is that it's intuitive, then you're wrong here as well.

Again, all that is needed is that everything shows some type of cause. You cannot limit it to a material cause, so you fail to establish a category error or special pleading. This objection fails with the rest of them.

But all things that begin to exist must have a material cause is intuitive. And one does not need to limit causation to material causation. You could argue that things that begin to exist must require both efficient and material causes (and perhaps other types of causes as well), but it would mean that the universe could not have had a beginning to its existence. Let me remind you that Aristotle himself who came up with these notions of causality was compelled by the same sort of logic you have borrowed from him to conclude that the universe/world must be eternal.

[Jenny A]

I don't mean to suggest that ideas don't exist.  They exist, but they do not exist in the way that physical objects do.  Nor do they existence independent of minds to think them.  This makes them a very different category of existing then that of physical objects. 

It might help instead to think of persistent patterns and you can then see that ideas are on the same scale as anything else that exists.

Take a table or inanimate object. That's actually at one end of the scale as it has the same atoms at the beginning of the stage where we would call that collection of atoms a table (as opposed to a tree for example) as it does at the end (before it becomes firewood or compost).

We exist as people, but we replace almost every cell in our body over a cycle of several years, except for neurons in the cerebral cortex. So even people are actually a persistent pattern that exists for a certain period of time. What's more that pattern changes quite radically over the course of its lifetime, from a single fertilised egg to someone dying of old age.

Clouds are the same. Air rises to the height where it reaches the dew point and it becomes too cold for the air to contain the water that it does so it condenses out to become the white vapour. This releases energy which allows the air to rise again continuing the process for a little bit further. A time lapse video of clouds developing into Cumulonimbus clouds is a quite example. What's more the air and water molecules can get replaced with new air depending on the cloud type.

As the saying goes, you can't step into the same river twice. Water is being flushed down and replaced with more water from higher above. It also flushes away the silt exposing more silt that was part of the river's environment that then becomes part of the river. It also changes shape throughout its lifetime, meandering through a field say or growing larger over time or drying up.

Societies or economies are made up of groups of people and businesses that form, die off, get replaced, or create new ones. Or can become part of it via immigration. So they too are persistent patterns.

A memory is a persistent pattern of neuronal firing. It changes each time it is recalled and restored. This memory can be written down but then when read can evoke similar patterns in the brain. Same goes for an idea.

The same applies for a concept, symphony, book or religion. It's on the other end of the scale from the table but they are still patterns that can persist through many different forms. But the crucial point is that they are persistent patterns reliant upon structures of matter and energy like anything else that exists.

It would be completely arbitrary and unwarranted to draw a distinction between all these examples of existence. If something exists then it does so because it is a persistent pattern. But different things change more or less radically throughout their lifetime or can exist in more or fewer different forms.

It does and doesn't help.  Clouds, people, tables, nebula , and other physical objects are all identifiable by their physicality.  Elephants gain and loose cells, molecules and atoms, but only certain kinds of cells, molectules and atoms.  And the structure remains much the same.  Clouds grow and shrink, it's going to be h2o that primarily makes them up.  We identify these things by shape, composition, material continuity.


An idea is dependant on physical things, a brain (biological or artificial, to create; a brain and perhaps other things such as speech or writing to preserve it. But we identify it by it's meaning,  not it's composition or shape.

Ideas are dependant on physical matter, but on what physical material it might be dependant on is limitless. And so is the shape of the the physical things which carry the idea.  We can write it on anything, dirt, DNA, steel, a chalkboard, papirous, dust. We can store it electronically. Or we can pass it by word of mouth or sign language or Morris Code.  We can translate it it into a different languages. In short what physical form it takes is essentially arbitrary.  But it's meaning remains regardless of its physical form.  And it is it's meaning is not it's physical form.

It exists, but it's not really a physical existence, though it is dependant of physical things to understand it and communicate it.

---

I don't mean to suggest that ideas don't exist.  They exist, but they do not exist in the way that physical objects do.  Nor do they existence independent of minds to think them.  This makes them a very different category of existing then that of physical objects.

As I mentioned before, “existence” is a term of art in philosophy. Without some agreed upon criteria people should use to decide what types of objects fall into or lie outside the category of “things that exist”, it’s a little premature start qualifying the existential status of various objects. There is even some debate about whether or not existence even truly counts as a property.

So given that we both acknowledge that existence is a property that some things have while others do not, it makes sense to me that there are subcategories of existing things depending on what other properties they do or do not have. So while I agree that there are things that exist that are material, like physical objects, I also maintain that things exist that are immaterial, like principles or numbers

Similarly, I actually agree with the statement that immaterial objects do not have independent existence from some mind that conceives them. That said, I am certain that we have very different notions of what constitutes a mind.

You keep insisting that by stating the physical existence of objects and the existence of ideas are different,  that I'm denying the existence of abstract ideas,  I am not.  But they are very different.  And my point to Steve concerning that difference is it's is too great a difference to material objects to lump them both into one category, when determining if they need a cause and what kind of cause.

I don't see how the ability to translate the word triangle into another language (or to write it rather the say it for that matter) makes the concept independent of the minds that think the concept.  And the appellation triangle is a useful concept.  But nothing about triangular shaped object is added to the object itself by the children's identification.

 
True nothing is added by identification. It is the act of identification that recognizes the forms, material, purposes and origins of bodies.

Sensible bodies have objective properties that can be abstracted from and conceived of apart from whatever  other properties that sensible body may have. We can conceive of a material, such as metal, without regard for any specific form that metal may take. We can think about its modulus of elasticity, melting point, and atomic weight without thinking about a specific form. Likewise, we can think about forms independent of their material. I can think about I-beams, make moment diagrams about them etc. abstracted from any particular I-beam made of a specific metal. ‘Steel’ is an abstraction every bit as much as the form ‘I-beam’.

My point is this. When we are talking about objective reality that means things that are true about the world regardless of who thinks about them. This includes (but is not limited to) the objective properties of sensible bodies, which is why a group of children can recognize the objective properties of various sensible bodies, including both whether they are described as wooden or whether they are described as triangular. There are real things about those sensible bodies that can be known intellectually. Something must justify the description regardless of whether you are describing its material, form, purpose, or origin.

Indeed they are.  Whether we have a way of measuring it or not, the speed of light remains the same,  the ratio of a circle' s circumference to its diameter would be the same with or without  human knowledge of pi .  But except as a human idea the speed of light is a physical thing, not an abstraction.  Ratios are a function of two and three dimensional space.  No more than the physical world in which they are true is necessary for them to be true.  No mind, God's or anyone else's is necessary.

I'm curious though,  if you think the concept triangle exists independent of minds to think it, do you think it began to exist, or do you think the concept is eternal?  If you do think it began to exist, when would you say it began? I believe it began to exist when the first mind created the category.

It exists eternally in the mind of God.[

As noted above, I disagree.  But again, I'm curious.  What else, do you think is eternal?  Just math and god, or are there more things that exist which you consider to be eEternal?

Also, do you think that the existence of ideas and objects is similar enough that anything about how one came to be can be usefully compared to how the other came to be?  My position is that they cannot and even if I accepted your idea of an independently existing triangle, I still find them too dissimilar for such a comparison.

Forms and Purposes are indispensable to attain knowledge. To use your example, elephants exist. It is extremely difficult, and I believe impossible, to describe what an elephant is by refereeing only to the matter from which it is made and successive states that matter takes. That is what you are asking people to do when you dispense with formal and final causes. No feature known by its form can ‘exist’ – not tusks, nor trunks, nor legs, nor tails. No feature known by its purpose can ‘exist’ – not hearts, nor lungs, nor blood, nor brains. Unless the forms and purposes manifest in the parts of the elephant, the elephant cannot exist.
My position is that considering only the efficient and material causes of things, in the abstract, is useful in natural science, but the ability to make those abstractions must take for granted the reality of forms and purposes.

So ultimately, the objection "those are just descriptions" is a double edged sword for those who use it to dismiss the reality of forms and purposes. Matter is also 'just' a description. There is a relationship between what things are, their existence, and how we describe the existence of those things. The decision to call some of those descriptions real while asserting that others are not is completely arbitrary. You need to give me some reason why the abstracted conception of a thing's matter is any more real than the abstract conception of it's form.

An interesting idea, but not really responsive to my question.  

Can you name anything you consider to "begin to exist," that does not have a physical cause?  And, are you suggesting that everything must have a formal and a final cause, or are there things for which a material cause and a sufficient cause are sufficient? (I didn't set out to pun, but I won't disown it).

[Jenny A]

 No. There is no "category error" unless the premise only applies to one category and not the other. That is not the case here. 

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Just because you can come up with categories, your "category error" charge is nonsense unless there is a category that somehow does not have a causal principle. Is there a category that has no causal principle? 

Quantum level particles.

But  setting that aside, each of my categories has a different kind of cause.  Placing the universe in the right category tells you what kind of cause to look for.  If the universe physically exists, you need a physical cause.  If it began to exist before time and space, than "cause" makes no sense. Cause and effect requires time.

1. What Do You Mean By Exist?

The first catagory error is equating the existence of physical objects, energy, with the existence of ideas. These are two very different meanings of the word "exist."  To see how different they are, all you have to do is ask where does it exist?  Physical objects have an identifiable location.  Where is my pencil, or where's the dog  are rational questions. Where is the English language? Where is The Pythagorean Theorem?   Or where is Beethoven's Fifth are not.  At best you might say Engish is spoken in these places, or Pythagoras's  Theorim is set out in my math book, or my score of the Fifth is over there on the desk.  But that's only physical places where the ideas are recorded.  They don't exist except as recorded in a brain or someother physical object.  In the sense that your pencil exists, ideas don't exist at all.  It's as if instead of asking for a pencil, you asked for pencilness.

The trouble with talking about the existense of ideas goes beyond the fact that they must be recorded.  To exist they must also be understood by someone.  Consider for example the possibility that if DNA were taken to represent a letter system in Hitite, English, or some language not yet spoken but which will be spoken in the future, that a sequence of DNA somewhere would spell out an intelligible sentence, maybe even a poetic one, such "eyes like liquid fire."   Would you say that that poem existed before someone worked out the "meaning" of that sequence? I wouldn't.  But I would have no trouble saying that the DNA sequence itself existed whether someone sequenced it or not.

The universe potentially poses a third kind of existence.  Where is the universe?  Well, unless there is something outside it, the answer is it's not in a place, it is the collective of all places and things. When we ask where, we are asking where in the universe?  To ask where is the universe is an as odd a question as where is the Pythagorean Theorem.  But unlike the theorem, the universe obviously  has  a physical existence and it's existence is not contingent on someone's knowing about it.

These two or three uses of the word exist are so different that using the word existence to mean both the existence of physical objects and the existence of ideas is a category error.

As you might learn from Neo, your use of the word "existence" is not fully developed. The fact that we can use 'exist' in separate ways does nothing to the KCA because all that meant is that anything that begins to exists (in any senses of the word) has a cause of its existence. 

The universe does not has a special kind of existence. It is a unique object, but that does not require a special category of existence. It either exists or does not exist. Asking "where" is just a nonsensical question that does not apply--much the same as what was it like 12 hours before the big bang. 

For the twelfth time, it is an objective feature of reality that everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. There are no exceptions and it seems that existence without a causal principle is not even coherent. You avoid answering this point because you think there has got to be something wrong with the form argument because you don't like the conclusion. There is nothing wrong with the argument. 

Rather than complain about my analysing what is meant by existence, I suggest YOU define it for purposes of the KCA.  

And, yes, there are things that happen at the quantum level that appear to be without cause.  Before your first premise  can be accepted, you'll need to explain quantum level causation.

 2.  What Do You Mean By Begin to Exist?

Here's where the multiple meanings of the word exist begin to create real havoc.  You and Craig insist that elephants don't appear out of nothing.  This is because elephants, have, as Aristotle would say, a material cause, i.e. they are made of something.  All physical objects are.  It's not the creation of an elephant that's  startling, it's the creation of the matter out of which the elephant is made. Elephants made out of material not previously existing in the universe would indeed be unprecedented.

This is because all physical objects have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense of the word, that is to say they are made of something.  And when we say something begins to be an elephant we mean that the matter out of which the elephant is made took the form of an elephant.  We don't mean new matter popped into existence and became an elephant.

The universe,  is physical in that it is made of material, meaning that in the Aristitileon sense, it has a material cause.  But you state that unlike the matter that makes up an elephant, the matter that makes up the universe did not exist prior to the universe.  That is an entirely different meaning of to begin to exist.  It is in fact the very kind of beginning to exist that you keep telling me elephants do not ever do.  And  also the very kind of begin to exist appears to occur at the  subatomic level which you say does not actually happen because it is too improbable.

Ideas on the other hand have no material cause in the Aristotelian sense.  That is to say that they have no material substance in that they are not made of anything only recorded in things.  You don't propose that a poem won't suddenly appear in my backyard because poems don't appear anywhere at all.  Poems  don't exist the way elephants do. But even though a poem is not made of something physical, it is created by something physical.  A poem not conceived or recognised by a brain (including artificial brains like computers) would simply not be in any sense of the word to exist.  It comes into being when it is recognized by someone as a poem.

So, just as you have conflated multiple meanings of exist, you have gone on to conflate multiple meanings of  of the phrase "begin to exist."

x begins to exist if and only if x exists at some time t and there is no time t* prior to t at which x exists.

This can be used for ALL real objects and abstract objects. Any further differentiations you want to make about beginning to exist is unnecessary. You seem to want to because you think it makes a difference to the argument. You can't show an exception or even reason into an exception, there is not category error or special pleading. The premise is sound. 

Are you being deliberately obtuse?  The point is not when, but what counts as beginning to exist.  An elephant is born out of existing matter.  Other than those quantum particles you keep ignoring, what do you know of that is ever made without preexisting material?  I don't think anything made out of stuff already in existence can be compared to the appearance of new things not made out of preexisting stuff. Why should we make that leap?

 3. What Do You Mean By Cause?

Not surprisingly using  multiple meanings for exist, and begin to exist leads to multiple kinds of causes for existence.  This is exacerbated by your insistence on using Aristotle's categorisation of causes as the be all end all way to describe cause.  

Aristotle predates Newton by a millennium. Of his terms, formal cause has long since been abandoned. We no longer say that an octave is caused by a 2:1 ratio.  Rather we say that the 2:1 ratio describes the octave.  Ratios do not cause anything.  They do describe the relationship between things.  And although we speak of the purpose for things we no longer talk about a ball having a purpose of getting to the bottom of a ramp. End purpose is only relevant to things created by a sentient being for a purpose.  An extraordinarily small portion of the present shape of things in the universe was formed for a purpose even though most of the objects used by humans were formed by humans for a pupose.  Purpose is an attribute assigned by people, an idea attached to the object as it were.

So, with regard to the types of beginning to exist discussed above, we know all physical objects in the universe which like an elephant are created out existing matter have a material cause (it's definitional). Physical objects at the human scale also have what Aristotle called an agency cause, or a sufficient cause, tellingly, also called a moving cause.  That is to say, an elephant is in it's particular place and in it's particular shape because of forces outside of itself.  In the case of physical objects, like an  elephant or a ball, or a mountain those outside forces are physical forces acting on the physical material that makes up the object. And really it's not a cause  but a myriad of material and moving causes.  

This does not necessarily hold true at the subatomic level where, while everything still is made of something, some particles appear not to be made from preexisting material.  And they appear to move without outside force.  If they have a cause, it's a very different meaning than the cause we mean when we look for the cause of an elephant. It's not even clear if cause is a relevant term.  You could say they have a material cause in the Aristitileon sense but that isn't really more that stating that they physically exist.

If, as you profess, the universe is not made of preexisting material and consists of matter that wasn't previously something else, then it too does not have cause in the way an elephant does.  What kind of cause is it that makes objects appear out of nothing?  

Ideas have no material cause in the Aristitileon sense as they are not made of anything.  They have no moving cause either as they have on material to be acted upon by outside forces.  Yet to the extent they can be said to exist, it is only because they can be recorded in physical objects and understood by physical beings.  They created and maintained by thought.  I suppose you could say they have an end cause.  But they also have a physical cause in that they are created by physical activity in  brains and communicated by physical means.

Again, all that is needed is that everything shows some type of cause. You cannot limit it to a material cause, so you fail to establish a category error or special pleading. This objection fails with the rest of them. 

The universe is material.  Name a single material thing without a material  cause. Hint, there are those pesky particles.  But if you ignore them, then we are back to all material things need a material cause.

4. Innapropriately Conflating Different Of Meanings With A Single Term is Category Error.

You have at least two different meanings of exist, at least two meanings of begin to exist, and many meanings of cause used in you proposition.  Saying l mean all of those doesn't solve the category error.

Nope. You unnecessarily created the distinctions, I didn't. Again, no category error because Premise (1) applies to all categories--so I am not treating them differently. [/Qoute]

The distinctions matter  I didn't create them, just pointed them out.  

If I say

All pets pant,
Goldfish are pets
Therefore goldfish pant

The problem is not solved by saying pets includes both dogs and goldfish, and panting includes all forms of breathing whether by mouth or by gills.  When talking about categories animals for purposes of animal physiology pets in an inherently bad category.  And using pant when what you mean is breath, is disingenuous.

The difference between physically existing and the existence of ideas; the difference between the creation of new matter and reforming of existing matter; and the difference between reshaping matter, having ideas and making new matter appear; are too dissimilar to be usefully refered to by the same names in form

Your little example is an affirming the consequent fallacy. That is not the form of the KCA so I really can't see your point. 

Answer this: are you going to claim that some sort of causal principle is NOT an objective feature of reality and seems absolutely necessary for any existence? Yes or No.

Think a little harder, it may come to you yet.

[Raven Orlock]

My ex-wife claimed that Odin spoke to her in late May 2011. From that point, she started losing weight and got a tattoo and started smoking because she claimed that Odin said she needs to be her real person. Ugh, she couldn't lose weight and put a cute dress on for me, she had to do it for some imaginary friend.

[SteveII]

 No. There is no "category error" unless the premise only applies to one category and not the other. That is not the case here. 

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Just because you can come up with categories, your "category error" charge is nonsense unless there is a category that somehow does not have a causal principle. Is there a category that has no causal principle? 

Quantum level particles.

RR already responded to this silly example that keeps coming up over and over and over:

Quantum mechanics merely describe what takes place at the quantum level.  It makes no reference to causes, but that does not imply that there are no causal entities involved.
Feser hypothesizes that perhaps Oerter understands the law of causality to refer to some sort of deterministic cause, and since quantum mechanics are supposedly indeterministic (a disputed interpretation), the law of causality could not apply.  Feser notes that “[t]he principle of causality doesn’t require that.  It requires only that a potency be actualized by something already actual; whether that something, whatever it is, actualizes potencies according some sort of pattern –deterministic or otherwise — is another matter altogether.”

The fact of the matter is that quantum mechanics has not identified causeless effects or invalidated the causal principle.  For any event to occur it must first have the potential to occur, and then have that potential actualized.  If that potential is actualized, it “must be actualized by something already actual,”[2] and that something is what we identify as the cause. https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2012/...principle/

But  setting that aside, each of my categories has a different kind of cause.  Placing the universe in the right category tells you what kind of cause to look for.  If the universe physically exists, you need a physical cause.  If it began to exist before time and space, than "cause" makes no sense. Cause and effect requires time.

First, notice that you are invoking a causal principle for the universe (in bold). You have just agreed with Premise 1. You seem to be objecting to PRem

Second, cause and effect do not require time. If anything, matter/motion/change is needed for time to exist (if not the cause of time itself). 

Third, you are right, saying that the universe began to exist before time and space makes not sense. That's why we don't say that. When the universe began to exist, so would time--simultaneously. 

Fourth, at some point, you run out of physical causes as you go back because it is impossible for there to have been an infinite amount of causes that have already elapsed in order to get to the start of our universe.

As you might learn from Neo, your use of the word "existence" is not fully developed. The fact that we can use 'exist' in separate ways does nothing to the KCA because all that meant is that anything that begins to exists (in any senses of the word) has a cause of its existence. 

The universe does not has a special kind of existence. It is a unique object, but that does not require a special category of existence. It either exists or does not exist. Asking "where" is just a nonsensical question that does not apply--much the same as what was it like 12 hours before the big bang. 

For the twelfth time, it is an objective feature of reality that everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. There are no exceptions and it seems that existence without a causal principle is not even coherent. You avoid answering this point because you think there has got to be something wrong with the form argument because you don't like the conclusion. There is nothing wrong with the argument. 

Rather than complain about my analysing what is meant by existence, I suggest YOU define it for purposes of the KCA. 

And, yes, there are things that happen at the quantum level that appear to be without cause.  Before your first premise  can be accepted, you'll need to explain quantum level causation.

x begins to exist if and only if x exists at some time t and there is no time t* prior to t at which x exists.

This can be used for ALL real objects and abstract objects. Any further differentiations you want to make about beginning to exist is unnecessary. You seem to want to because you think it makes a difference to the argument. You can't show an exception or even reason into an exception, there is not category error or special pleading. The premise is sound. 

Are you being deliberately obtuse?  The point is not when, but what counts as beginning to exist.  An elephant is born out of existing matter.  Other than those quantum particles you keep ignoring, what do you know of that is ever made without preexisting material?  I don't think anything made out of stuff already in existence can be compared to the appearance of new things not made out of preexisting stuff. Why should we make that leap?

Something begins to exist when it becomes more than just its component parts and/or separate from the cause of its existence. An elephant begins to exist when takes shape in the womb. A chair becomes a chair when it can serve the purpose of a chair. An idea begins to exist when it has sufficient content to convey meaning. Arguing about stages of completion is semantics and entirely subjective. The principle is always there--at one point you didn't have x and and another point you obviously have x. 

Regarding your "preexisting stuff" and "leap", we are very clearly talking about prior to the universe. Why would we limit ourselves to a component of the causal principle that very obviously has to do with the atoms and molecules within our universe. Imposing a material cause restriction when there are many examples of things that do not have material causes is not justifiable. Additionally, through inductive reasoning, we can clearly see that an infinite chain of material causes is impossible. There is no such thing as an actual infinite by successive addition. There must be an immaterial cause at some point in the past chain.  

Again, all that is needed is that everything shows some type of cause. You cannot limit it to a material cause, so you fail to establish a category error or special pleading. This objection fails with the rest of them. 

The universe is material.  Name a single material thing without a material  cause. Hint, there are those pesky particles.  But if you ignore them, then we are back to all material things need a material cause.

Again with the "in the universe" restrictions. The conversation is about before the universe.