First order logic, set theory and God

[T0 Th3 M4X]

You must mean that you don't know.  I already commented on what I know.

You know nothing, Jon Snow.


I'm not afraid to "not know" something.  That's why I go out and study it.  That's how I go from "no" to "know."

[Angrboda]

Oh, and for what it's worth, I reject P1. Hawking-Hartle allows me to do that. Seeing as one of the premises is unsound, we're done.

[Rahn127]

I presented my objections to each part and gave examples that show each part is flawed.

In the car scenario, he uses the car as an example purposely. A car is designed with certain finite precise parts that do not change over time. A car is not grown. It doesn't form from a set of natural conditions.

It is not natural.

Nature and reality behave in ways that are not so neat and clean. Everything in nature is constantly changing and yet we still label things as the same thing even when they've changed.

The sun, our Galaxy, the universe is constantly changing. Heavy metals form within stars, but it doesn't happen immediately. A star is born through gravity and matter. Conditions over time produce new heavy elements and at the same time, helium is used up and eventually you have a star with no more fuel.

The energy of the universe is dynamic and always changing. If something is always changing and it exists now then it has always existed and causation is meaningless when referring to something that has always existed.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

I presented my objections to each part and gave examples that show each part is flawed.

In the car scenario, he uses the car as an example purposely. A car is designed with certain finite precise parts that do not change over time. A car is not grown. It doesn't form from a set of natural conditions.

It is not natural.

Nature and reality behave in ways that are not so neat and clean. Everything in nature is constantly changing and yet we still label things as the same thing even when they've changed.

The sun, our Galaxy, the universe is constantly changing. Heavy metals form within stars, but it doesn't happen immediately. A star is born through gravity and matter. Conditions over time produce new heavy elements and at the same time, helium is used up and eventually you have a star with no more fuel.

The energy of the universe is dynamic and always changing. If something is always changing and it exists now then it has always existed and causation is meaningless when referring to something that has always existed.

You first argument supported his argument.  The other two were iffy, so they would probably first need to be clarified.  Actually your sun argument here would also be beneficial to his overall position.  It's not ruling out change, but rather asserting causation. Once something is caused, it is still a product of whatever caused it.  Therefore anything that came as a result of the initial cause would be a subject of the original cause.

So if the sun was caused, then anything the sun caused to happen would be subject to whatever caused the sun.

A (Whatever force) leads to B (Sun) which leads to C (Plants growing).  The sun can't make those plants grow unless the sun was first caused.  If the plants start to grow, then the sun is taken out of the equation, those plants are still a product of A and B.  And so on and so on.  If the plants caused by A+B at any point cause something else, then the that becomes a subject of A+B+C. Like a big chain reaction.

I think this is why he mentions the "straw that broke the camel's back"  The collective effort of the first 999 straws led the the contribution of the 1000th straw to seal the deal.  On it's own, the 1000th straw was only 1/1000 of the potential needed to get the job done (assuming all straws are equal).

[Angrboda]

I also think the questions asserted about the necessary temporal relationships involved have merit, depending on the specific objection. P1 necessarily asserts that for any two things, X1 and X2, if X1 is the cause of X2, then X1 precedes the existence of X2, except in the case in which X2 is self caused, in which case there is no temporal relationship. This gets tricky because it's possible that the universe is caused, but there is no temporally prior existence. The validity of that objection is debatable. The more serious objection was Hawking-Hartle which shows that these necessary temporal relationships simply do not hold in all cases, furnishing a third option to P1, which then fails due to a misapplication of the law of the excluded middle. But there's an even more problematic concern, given the temporal relationships. God, according to contemporary theology, does not exist in time before the universe exists, and indeed did and in some sense continues to exist in a timeless state. This is a problem for P1 because the temporal relationship must be there or else the whole idea of one thing causing another thing is incoherent. I don't think that's a problem for a thing causing itself. Given that this temporal relation must hold, and God's existence prior to the universe existence is atemporal, P1 effectively rules out the god of contemporary theology because the temporal relation necessary to make causality coherent in P1 does not hold. So, either this proof doesn't work for proving that God and must be referencing an entity with different properties from that God, or it doesn't prove anything at all. I've developed an independent proof of the non-existence of God which employs similar necessary relationships to show that the God of contemporary theology cannot exist. Actually, that's a little strong. What my argument does show is that either God does not exist, or cosmological arguments, like this one, do not hold. Either accomplishes what I need to accomplish in order to dismiss such proofs.

If he [God] existed and the universe did not, then that moment and that of creation are two moments, and he exists in time (Craig, 2002). If he existed in time, and is a necessary being -- has always existed -- then he couldn't have created the universe, as that would have required the traversal of an actual infinite, which is impossible (Craig, 2007). If he existed and created simultaneously, then he also exists in time, as simultaneity is a temporal relation. In that case he did not create the universe because a cause must precede its effect. So, your God did not create the universe in either case. As this exhausts the potential cases, your God did not create the universe. Since God is by definition the creator of the universe, your God does not exist.

It isn't noted in the above, but any attempt to place God prior to the two moments of time which exists if God exists and the universe does not simply adds additional moments of time, via a similar principle to mathematical induction. So objecting to that part of the above does not succeed as it can be extended infinitely via that induction. I'm too lazy to verify it at the moment, but I think that my above argument meets all three of Hatcher's principles, and would therefore count as an anti-proof of the original argument. Of course, I've already pointed out how the three principles lead to an infinite regress, this just shows that point more explicitly. Any counter-argument has to defeat the mathematical induction in the above argument, or else an infinite regress is a necessary consequence.

[Pat Mustard]

I'm not afraid to "not know" something.  That's why I go out and study it.  That's how I go from "no" to "know."

But not knowing doesn't allow you to declare "goddidit". In fact it is the opposite, because all goddidit is is an empty assertion.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

I'm not afraid to "not know" something.  That's why I go out and study it.  That's how I go from "no" to "know."

But not knowing doesn't allow you to declare "goddidit".  In fact it is the opposite, because all goddidit is is an empty assertion.

Sorry, but I don't apply circular logic to my thinking, so I can't agree with your statement.

Not knowing (for me) means I can't declare.  Therefore you can declare the opposite even though your same logic wouldn't allow you to declare that it's an empty assertion.  Therefore, by default I must accept your logic (or assume it's correct).

Nope. How does that even make sense?  Maybe in cartoon world.  If you can't declare something due to lack of knowledge in setting A, you can't declare something due to lack of knowledge in setting B.  Actually it's even worse in your case because you're applying an absolute that you can't substantiate as soon as you say "all."

My requirement would be to provide evidence of "goddidit" once.  Your requirement would be to disprove every claim of "goddidit" that "all" encompasses.  Probably millions or billions, so you better get started.  That's why it doesn't make sense to make such claims.

Max requirement for me - Demonstrate a god x1 and said god did something x1.
Your minimum requirement - Disprove all gods in your claim.  If you can't do that, you must exhaustively prove no claims could've been done by a god.

This is where Homer Simpson would say "Doh"

[The Grand Nudger]

-and that is why you'll never be able to claim that you know it wasn't a race of sentient bath loofas that created our universe.

[Belacqua]

So ... now that I've fully read the OP, I went through the first two to three pages of this thread, and it turns out that first Jorm and then Khem/Gae already pointed out the one problem that stands out with the argument: that the first cause need not be a supernatural God, even if the OP decides to call it "God" anyway.

So Belaqua, you were being unfair in saying that no one effectively addressed the argument earlier.

Really, that was all that was needed to be pointed out. I admit on the basis of my full reading of the OP, my initial counterargument was overkill.

Early on, dron3 made it clear that the argument only addresses a first cause. To show that this cause is anything like a Muslim or Christian God demands lots of other arguments. 

I pointed that out too, as I recall. 

As to whether the first cause can be a part of nature, or has to be somehow outside of nature, that's a part of the argument. That's what all the talk about a whole system vs. a part of that system is about. If a natural object exists, then nature exists. But if nature already exists, then it can't be caused by nature. That's a pretty basic part of the premises.

[The Grand Nudger]

The thread title, much of the op, and a significant portion of attendant convo begs to differ.

Meanwhile, if some "first cause" existed.. whatever it required to exist must also exist, and by the same explicitly temporal rule then it couldn't be the cause of whatever that was. We can only go over this so many times. Causal relationships are explicitly temporal, there must be some media in which to -be- a cause, time in which to effect the relationship.