First order logic, set theory and God

[I_am_not_mafia]

There is nothing for me to demonstrate at this point - most of your arguments, did however, demonstrate a thinly veiled attempt to shift the paradigm to make it appear as if Hatcher's proof was trying to establish the complexity of reality, when the contention was that of substantiating the origin of reality. God damn it, learn to read. The O-R-I-G-I-N. Not the complexity and the physical laws that governs reality. 

It's utterly laughable that you have gone at great length trying to establish that the laws of thermodynamics was more fitting at explaining reality than logic, when all of this was totally irrelevant. You've wasted your time arguing on notions that were completely extraneous to Hatcher's proof, and not worth considering in discussing.

So let's summarise here.

You are making an argument about how absolutely everything in the universe came to exist (because of your god) by using a rule that inadequately describes how things happen within this universe (causation) to explain how the universe was created by something external to it.

By doing this you are saying that the laws that govern this universe also exist in the larger external universe that this universe exists in (but without explaining how that external universe was created)


I point out how your argument does not adequately describe how things happen within this universe (causation abstracts over thermodynamics and continuous processes) and your response is you're only talking about the origin and not 'the complexity and the physical laws that governs reality'.


So is causation NOT a physical law that governs reality and explains complexity?

Why are you using causation but not thermodynamics?

Or are you arguing that how this universe functions says nothing about how it was created? In which case why refer to causation at all and just argue that the universe was created by magic?

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't need to read Neo's post to understand that the bit " which exactly what the op did, too" was directed towards me and thus insinuating that I was supposedly "raising the possibility of a god of any kind."

Actually, I think you just read god in.  Neo's comments are his own, and my comments to neo about his comments are..wait for it....about his comments, and yeah...in spie of your protestations to the contrary...you probably would have to read them to understand that, numbskull.

Words, how do they work, and what is word, anyway?    

I don't think it has anything to do with djinn. I mean, do you think it has something to do with Hatcher's proof ?

I guess that makes your thread title a misnomer, and your comments -in- thread inexplicable, then.  That would be a you problem.  : shrugs :

That's lovely - but do you know what mental picture I conceived when I read your post ? A stereotypical version of a hobo-like pedophile-looking Conor Mcgregor (looking at your profile pic) intensely breathing  as he was frantically delivering repeated heavy blows at the keyboard, while entertaining the delirious thought that cherry-picking a statement to prove a point was a good idea - only then to realize that he completely overlooked the preceding part laying out the 3 empirically-grounded principles that, to his bewilderment, happens to substantiate why the reader should already "accept and understand the existence of a universal uncaused cause (i.e., God)". 

Not so ironic, considering the above - don't you think ? Or am I reading this way too far ? 

Awesome, then we've established that we both have an imagination.  In point of fact it was your imagination that lead you to read djinn in to some argument about a first cause.

[GrandizerII]

Just now I re-read the whole thread. No one makes a coherent argument against what he's saying. At the beginning Reltzik makes a reasonable objection, and dr0n3 clarifies properly. Then Polymath replies intelligently, and dr0n3 explains some more. 

No one else deals with what dr0n3 has said. There is some off-topic stuff where people choose to address something other than the argument, and there's a lot of content-free insult. But there are no solid objections that have gone unanswered.

Really? I took into consideration all three of the OP principles and still concluded that it is still possible for the sustaining cause to be naturalistic. Is logical Existence (not to be confused with universe/cosmos) not enough to be a sustaining cause? Must there be anything beyond the "state of affairs" itself for everything else to exist?

Maybe I'm being naive about something in my argument, or maybe no one is getting my point, but I didn't get any solid objection to my point from the OP or you for that matter. What you did earlier amounted to "Yeah, I don't know man, but there's this specific theist philosopher/theologian who elegantly argues something relevant here, and I don't know if I understand it correctly, but it seems compelling". That's basically the response I got from you.

Edit to add: I'm not convinced that the principle of limitation must unconditionally hold. Please convince me otherwise.

[Belacqua]

Just now I re-read the whole thread. No one makes a coherent argument against what he's saying. At the beginning Reltzik makes a reasonable objection, and dr0n3 clarifies properly. Then Polymath replies intelligently, and dr0n3 explains some more. 

No one else deals with what dr0n3 has said. There is some off-topic stuff where people choose to address something other than the argument, and there's a lot of content-free insult. But there are no solid objections that have gone unanswered.

Really? I took into consideration all three of the OP principles and still concluded that it is still possible for the sustaining cause to be naturalistic. Is logical Existence (not to be confused with universe/cosmos) not enough to be a sustaining cause? Must there be anything beyond the "state of affairs" itself for everything else to exist?

Maybe I'm being naive about something in my argument, or maybe no one is getting my point, but I didn't get any solid objection to my point from the OP or you for that matter. What you did earlier amounted to "Yeah, I don't know man, but there's this specific theist philosopher/theologian who elegantly argues something relevant here, and I don't know if I understand it correctly, but it seems compelling". That's basically the response I got from you.

Edit to add: I'm not convinced that the principle of limitation must unconditionally hold. Please convince me otherwise.

I'm willing to review the whole thing if you're up for it.  Here is the first statement in the OP:

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both. Put another way, this principle says that the question "why?" is always meaningful. Everything happens for a reason.

So to take it step by step, is this reasonable?

[Angrboda]

Really? I took into consideration all three of the OP principles and still concluded that it is still possible for the sustaining cause to be naturalistic. Is logical Existence (not to be confused with universe/cosmos) not enough to be a sustaining cause? Must there be anything beyond the "state of affairs" itself for everything else to exist?

Maybe I'm being naive about something in my argument, or maybe no one is getting my point, but I didn't get any solid objection to my point from the OP or you for that matter. What you did earlier amounted to "Yeah, I don't know man, but there's this specific theist philosopher/theologian who elegantly argues something relevant here, and I don't know if I understand it correctly, but it seems compelling". That's basically the response I got from you.

Edit to add: I'm not convinced that the principle of limitation must unconditionally hold. Please convince me otherwise.

I'm willing to review the whole thing if you're up for it.  Here is the first statement in the OP:

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both. Put another way, this principle says that the question "why?" is always meaningful. Everything happens for a reason.

So to take it step by step, is this reasonable?

Which PSR are we accepting and for what reason?

[GrandizerII]

Really? I took into consideration all three of the OP principles and still concluded that it is still possible for the sustaining cause to be naturalistic. Is logical Existence (not to be confused with universe/cosmos) not enough to be a sustaining cause? Must there be anything beyond the "state of affairs" itself for everything else to exist?

Maybe I'm being naive about something in my argument, or maybe no one is getting my point, but I didn't get any solid objection to my point from the OP or you for that matter. What you did earlier amounted to "Yeah, I don't know man, but there's this specific theist philosopher/theologian who elegantly argues something relevant here, and I don't know if I understand it correctly, but it seems compelling". That's basically the response I got from you.

Edit to add: I'm not convinced that the principle of limitation must unconditionally hold. Please convince me otherwise.

I'm willing to review the whole thing if you're up for it.  Here is the first statement in the OP:

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both. Put another way, this principle says that the question "why?" is always meaningful. Everything happens for a reason.

So to take it step by step, is this reasonable?

Happy to oblige. It seems reasonable enough to me. Now is there something about God that makes it satisfactory to argue he is "self-caused" that one cannot apply to Existence/Reality itself?

[ignoramus]

Drone - You are an idiot.

As an idiot you probably don't know the definition of an idiot. Ask an adult to look it up for you.

As such, you are no longer worth my time.

In the simplest terms I tried, but that didn't work.
I can only conclude that you are incapable of understanding and thus you are an idiot.

Idiot:
synonyms: fool, ass, halfwit, dunce, dolt, ignoramus, cretin, moron, imbecile, simpleton

And on the off chance you didn't understand any of that, let me say it even clearer.

You are stupid.

I resemble that remark!

[Belacqua]

Which PSR are we accepting and for what reason?

The PSR being discussed in this thread is stated this way:

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both. Put another way, this principle says that the question "why?" is always meaningful. Everything happens for a reason.

Whether you accept it or not, and for what reasons, is what I'm asking.

---

Happy to oblige. It seems reasonable enough to me.

Good. That's step one. For the purposes of the current thread, P1, the PSR, seems to make sense. 

Now is there something about God that makes it satisfactory to argue he is "self-caused" that one cannot apply to Existence/Reality itself?

I think maybe that comes at the end of the argument instead of the beginning. I have a vague idea what other versions of the argument would answer, but since I'm reviewing not asserting, I'll let that be. 

What was dron3's response to your question? Did he get to that point? 

And to continue my ploddingly baby-steps review: does P2 also makes sense?

P2. The potency principle: If A -> B then for all C element of B, A -> C. In other words if A is the cause of B then A is the cause of every part of B. There are several notions of causality in philosophy. Hatcher's notion of causality is total causality; i.e. it is not the straw that breaks the camel's back but the 1000 straws before it, the camel, gravity, and so forth, that give rise to the camel breaking its back.

[GrandizerII]

And to continue my ploddingly baby-steps review: does P2 also makes sense?

P2. The potency principle: If A -> B then for all C element of B, A -> C. In other words if A is the cause of B then A is the cause of every part of B. There are several notions of causality in philosophy. Hatcher's notion of causality is total causality; i.e. it is not the straw that breaks the camel's back but the 1000 straws before it, the camel, gravity, and so forth, that give rise to the camel breaking its back.

I don't see much of a problem with it. So I'm happy to concede this for the sake of argument. Now for P3, on the other hand, I don't fully agree with.

[polymath257]

Really? I took into consideration all three of the OP principles and still concluded that it is still possible for the sustaining cause to be naturalistic. Is logical Existence (not to be confused with universe/cosmos) not enough to be a sustaining cause? Must there be anything beyond the "state of affairs" itself for everything else to exist?

Maybe I'm being naive about something in my argument, or maybe no one is getting my point, but I didn't get any solid objection to my point from the OP or you for that matter. What you did earlier amounted to "Yeah, I don't know man, but there's this specific theist philosopher/theologian who elegantly argues something relevant here, and I don't know if I understand it correctly, but it seems compelling". That's basically the response I got from you.

Edit to add: I'm not convinced that the principle of limitation must unconditionally hold. Please convince me otherwise.

I'm willing to review the whole thing if you're up for it.  Here is the first statement in the OP:

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both. Put another way, this principle says that the question "why?" is always meaningful. Everything happens for a reason.

So to take it step by step, is this reasonable?

Not all terms have been sufficiently defined.

For example, what is a phenomenon? How are they recognized? In your first order system, how are they constructed? What axioms allow the existence and description of phenomena?

As I pointed out before, it may be that a more likely axiom would be that every *finite* phenomenon has a cause. But even that needs some clarification.

Do we really have any reason to think that infinite phenomena have causes? All phenomena we have observed are finite, so that suggests that we only know about finite phenomena.

So, no, as stated I do NOT accept this.