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Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 2:44 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Um, what are you even talking about? The entire discussion was about what caused the universe, which means the universe is the last element of the causal chain.

This topic was supposed to be about peanut butter, but then it went all over the place, like boldly into the God of the gaps fallacy: "we don't know what was before the universe, therefore God".

And if there is something that has failed over and over again through human history of religious scams it's God of the gaps: we don't know what is on top of that mountain, therefore god; we don't know what is in the clouds, therefore god; we don't know what is under ground... - it's pathetic.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
It's worth noting that apparently Klor feels that the great questions of existence can be answered by consulting the dictionary, while actual thinkers spend enormous time and energy researching the Hawking-Hartle No Boundary Proposal and trying to determine if it's reasonable or not. Apparently, they are unaware that dictionaries exist.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 3:32 pm)Angrboda Wrote: Merriam-Webster lists the following antonyms for eternal: ephemeral, evanescent, fleeting, fugacious, fugitive, momentary, passing, short-lived, transitory, interim, provisional, short-term -- none of which tells us anything prescient about the question.  That you're reduced to arguing the meaning of words shows the level of thought in play.  The meaning of words do not dictate physics nor logic and at times violate them.  If you don't have a better argument then you are basically fucked, in addition to showing yourself not particularly clever.  I take it from your response that you are unaware of any alternatives to the options which you claim are mutually exclusive.  However, coherent alternatives to eternal and beginning to exist have been suggested and are sufficiently well known that they have drawn responses from theists such as William Lane Craig and Paul Copan.  Regardless of whether any specific proposed alternative to the options you present is the case for our universe, it's clear that one can speculate about a universe with no beginning that is not past eternal without obviously entailing a contradiction and so the idea is coherent and therefore possible for this universe, or any other.  Since a third possibility exists, what you have presented is, in addition to being unsupported and therefore fallaciously ipse dixit, an example of a false dichotomy.  That you don't understand that both flaws doom your argument only shows that as far as this discussion goes, your arguments are the epitome of low-hanging fruit.  I suggest you do some reading, or, at the least, do yourself the favor of making an argument that is not dependent upon your apparently poor grasp of what certain words mean.  It is not an analytical truth of the concept of past eternity that its negation entails a temporal boundary; it does not.  Nor is it analytically implied by the lack of a temporal boundary that a thing is past eternal.  The only thing we've discovered here is that you're both ignorant and not particularly good at words or logic.

Since you have presented no argument that no alternatives to your two exists, your conclusion that I have violated the law of the excluded middle is baseless and thereby rejected.

ps.  I notice you've shut up about benevolence.  That's probably for the best as in addition to showing you to be a liar, it also shows your inability to keep one argument straight from another.

Now, unless you have an argument that is actually valid which answers what I have written, your complaints are dismissed as the groundless twaddle that they are.

Congratulations @Angrboda, you mercilessly raped logic and broke the boundaries of existence. Now, no amount of silly justifications will excuse your sophistry. The "alternatives" you're talking about are simply subtler ways in which the universe could have began, not some sophistic midpoint between a proposition and its direct logical negation. 

@Jehanne tried to take the same sophistic path out by suggesting the no boundary proposal, which turned out to be a description of how the universe began. @polymath257 shamelessly tried to find an alternative to classical logic and proposed a defunct interpretation of QM. And it turned out (Flash news  Hilarious) that classical logic actually describes the mathematical structure of QM perfectly well.

What a silly board of sophists.

The discussion stops here. Once you're past the red line of the laws of thought, you stop being rational. Have a good day.

(September 16, 2021 at 3:37 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: This must be a sexual thing for Kloro. Not that there’s anything wrong with masochism…

Boru

Can't you be fair once ...?  I guess I can't expect any kind of acknowledgment in an atheist board, even when I am right.
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
At work.

"Red lined the laws of though."

Yup am gon'a keep that for the next bit of fiction I write.

Very 'Johhny Mnemonic' vibe happening there.

'Maxim grit their teeth as the whine from their Neuro-turboes rose in pitch. Slowly climbing into the red lines of thought while the intrusion black ice krept closer. The glittering cyber hounds tracing her deck's source codes back to where her meat skull lay prone....'

Thank'e muchly.
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 2:44 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:
(September 14, 2021 at 11:51 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: We're a hyper social species, endowed with a great many adaptations to that effect..though...to be fair to all other life, none of that makes us particularly benevolent - and it causes some pretty serious issues between groups, too.

I want to ask, though, are you willing to account for all of humanities attributes when you propose benevolence through design?  We have flaws too..deep flaws.  Does this suggest the designer is flawed in the way that having some amount of benevolence would suggest the designer is benevolent?  We're flawed, and we can't have gotten what our creator didn't have to give..correct?

Well, there is a problem here. Flawness is the absence/lack of perfectness, not a character per se, we can't apply the same inference on a negative concept. Furthermore, there is no logical problem with a perfect being creating imperfect creatures. Even if one makes the very strong (and wrong) assumption that a perfect being must create the best of all possible worlds, it can still be imperfect beings enjoying perfect conditions.

(September 14, 2021 at 12:08 pm)Jehanne Wrote: The no boundary proposal?

The no boundary proposal entails that the universe began to exist,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%...king_state

QUOTE :However, Hawking does state "...the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago."

If the universe has not existed forever, it began to exist. 

(September 14, 2021 at 12:28 pm)polymath257 Wrote: And in such a universe, there would be no causality.

There you go, dodging my request again:

I need a reference stating that causality is a physical law, as you said pages ago, and a demonstration of the assertion above: that a lawless universe could violate causality.

I can wait.

(September 14, 2021 at 12:28 pm)polymath257 Wrote: No, the universe is NOT an element of that causal chain. The causal chain happens *within* the universe.

Um, what are you even talking about? The entire discussion was about what caused the universe, which means the universe is the last element of the causal chain.

(September 14, 2021 at 12:28 pm)polymath257 Wrote: And what makes it impossible to have an infinite sequence of events preceding something? it seems like a perfectly sensible thing to me.

What makes it impossible is that this something will never happen. In order to get to this something(S), an infinite amount of events should occur, which takes, in turn, an infinitely long amount of time to get to S. And since an infinitely long period will never elapse, S will never exist.

That's why an eternal past is impossible, an eternal past is by definition an unending period in the past, and any unending period can't have a present moment occuring after it, because it takes eternity for this past to "end".

(September 14, 2021 at 12:28 pm)polymath257 Wrote: Yes, we absolutely observe the law of excluded middle at the classical level *and* its violation at the quantum level. it is a matter of observation whether logic with the law of excluded middle is helpful or not. There are versions of logic without it and, for example, quantum logic is found to be useful.

No, you're absolutely wrong. I assume you're referring to an object's ability to be in two places at once. This is not a violation of the law of excluded middle because, under QM, objects are by definition capable of being everywhere at once, therefore, classical logic still applies to properly formulated sentences about QM.

QM only shakes up our definitions of objects and how we label reality around us, but once our labels/definitions are accurate, or say, updated, then classical logic will work wonderfully on these definitions.

Quantum logic comes from the vast topic of interpreting quantum mechanics, it eventually fell out of favor. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic#Criticism
Quote : "The approach of quantum logic has been generally seen as unsuccessful. The eminent philosopher of science Tim Maudlin writes, “the horse of quantum logic has been so thrashed, whipped and pummeled, and is so thoroughly deceased that...the question is not whether the horse will rise again, it is: how in the world did this horse get here in the first place? The tale of quantum logic is not the tale of a promising idea gone bad, it is rather the tale of the unrelenting pursuit of a bad idea.” The entire mathematical complex structure of quantum mechanics is perfectly well-described and clear and understood using classical logic."

Read again: The entire mathematical complex structure of quantum mechanics is perfectly well-described and clear and understood using classial logic.

Yeah , classical logic works.

(September 14, 2021 at 6:11 pm)Angrboda Wrote: You have presented neither deductive nor inductive argument for their mutual exclusivity.  

Hilarious
Tell me @Angrboda, what's the opposite of the word eternal ?

Gosh.

(September 16, 2021 at 12:42 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Wrong. As been demonstrated in this very thread. Amazing that you think you’ve solved mysteries of reality that the greatest scientific minds in the world

Bickering about causality or the law of the excluded middle is not a "mystery of reality", it's sophism. The greatest scientific minds in the world aren't sophists, I hope.. for our sake....

(September 16, 2021 at 12:42 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: And even if we grant you those assumptions, that still only gets you to “a cause.” Not a god. 

How generous of you. Tell you what, don't grant me anything, either accept causality or be more upfront about your denial of the simplest principles of thought.

Fine. I’ll play along. I accept the conclusion of the KCA; that the universe had a cause. Your move.
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”

Wiser words were never spoken. 
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Sounds like a no.  Semantics won't help, I'll immediately ask you about perfection being the absence of flaws and..given the above, you'll immediately reverse your position on the matter.  We can save ourselves the trouble.  

Why would you define perfection like that....? A common definition of a perfect being is a maximally great being. We know what maximally great means. Perfect knowledge, for example, as an aspect of perfectness, is the knowledge of all true propositions. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything that is logically possible, etc.

As you can see, we don't need to resort to any negative definition when it comes to perfectness. But it seems to me you would agree that flawness is not a character, but a metric or measure of different characters....

(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Then it isn't actually a rule, as you asserted, that we can only get what our creator has to give - and even you don't believe as much.  Our proposed creator has perfection..but we don't, and our proposed creator has no flaws...but we do.  In fact, you believe that we can get things our creator doesn't have. 

As I pointed out, flawness is not a thing. It's a measurement of some character or ability or function. 

(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: How does this fit with your belief that our claimed benevolence is evidence of a benevolent god?  Give-get.

How does it fit into your belief that nature cannot be the agent of human benevolence? Has-hasn't.

Benevolence is our default state, how can anyone argue otherwise? Even without resorting to religion at all, it's clear that benevolence, empathy, some sense of justice, etc. are a necessary requirement for coexistence, otherwise we wouldn't be able to form societies even in their most rudimentary form, nor ensure the survival of our species to begin with.
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 4:23 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: @Jehanne tried to take the same sophistic path out by suggesting the no boundary proposal, which turned out to be a description of how the universe began. @polymath257 shamelessly tried to find an alternative to classical logic and proposed a defunct interpretation of QM. And it turned out (Flash news  Hilarious) that classical logic actually describes the mathematical structure of QM perfectly well.

What a silly board of sophists.

Well, then, good riddance.  But, while you exit the door, here is an essay that you ought to read, at least if you want to understand why many of Us (and, indeed, many to most scientists) are atheists:

Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 4:41 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:
(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Sounds like a no.  Semantics won't help, I'll immediately ask you about perfection being the absence of flaws and..given the above, you'll immediately reverse your position on the matter.  We can save ourselves the trouble.  

Why would you define perfection like that....? A common definition of a perfect being is a maximally great being. We know what maximally great means. Perfect knowledge, for example, as an aspect of perfectness, is the knowledge of all true propositions. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything that is logically possible, etc.

As you can see, we don't need to resort to any negative definition when it comes to perfectness. But it seems to me you would agree that flawness is not a character, but a metric or measure of different characters....
It doesn't matter what I would define perfection like, only that both of us believe that a things attributes are not strictly limited to what it's cause has or had to give, that things can have attributes that their causes don't - in clear and immediate violation of your asserted rule.

You don't think that man can't be imperfect simply because mans creator is perfect, nor do you believe that man is perfect even though you do believe it's creator is perfect.  There is no room in these beliefs to assert the rule you immediately discarded..and I don't fault you for discarding it.  I fault your argument for having ever presented it in the first place.

I'm trying to help you argue, not argue against you.  Take the help...you need it.
Quote:
(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Then it isn't actually a rule, as you asserted, that we can only get what our creator has to give - and even you don't believe as much.  Our proposed creator has perfection..but we don't, and our proposed creator has no flaws...but we do.  In fact, you believe that we can get things our creator doesn't have. 

As I pointed out, flawness is not a thing. It's a measurement of some character or ability or function. 
Perfection is not a thing....see...pointless.....  Jerkoff

Quote:
(September 16, 2021 at 4:02 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: How does this fit with your belief that our claimed benevolence is evidence of a benevolent god?  Give-get.

How does it fit into your belief that nature cannot be the agent of human benevolence? Has-hasn't.

Benevolence is our default state, how can anyone argue otherwise? Even without resorting to religion at all, it's clear that benevolence, empathy, some sense of justice, etc. are a necessary requirement for coexistence, otherwise we wouldn't be able to form societies even in their most rudimentary form, nor ensure the survival of our species to begin with.
It's pretty easy to argue otherwise, but that doesn't matter between us since you and I both believe that man is generally good despite those easy arguments to the contrary.  The problem, is that neither of us believes in your rule of giving and getting.

So, again, going forward, might we restrict ourselves to making claims that we actually believe?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 4:23 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:
(September 16, 2021 at 3:32 pm)Angrboda Wrote: Merriam-Webster lists the following antonyms for eternal: ephemeral, evanescent, fleeting, fugacious, fugitive, momentary, passing, short-lived, transitory, interim, provisional, short-term -- none of which tells us anything prescient about the question.  That you're reduced to arguing the meaning of words shows the level of thought in play.  The meaning of words do not dictate physics nor logic and at times violate them.  If you don't have a better argument then you are basically fucked, in addition to showing yourself not particularly clever.  I take it from your response that you are unaware of any alternatives to the options which you claim are mutually exclusive.  However, coherent alternatives to eternal and beginning to exist have been suggested and are sufficiently well known that they have drawn responses from theists such as William Lane Craig and Paul Copan.  Regardless of whether any specific proposed alternative to the options you present is the case for our universe, it's clear that one can speculate about a universe with no beginning that is not past eternal without obviously entailing a contradiction and so the idea is coherent and therefore possible for this universe, or any other.  Since a third possibility exists, what you have presented is, in addition to being unsupported and therefore fallaciously ipse dixit, an example of a false dichotomy.  That you don't understand that both flaws doom your argument only shows that as far as this discussion goes, your arguments are the epitome of low-hanging fruit.  I suggest you do some reading, or, at the least, do yourself the favor of making an argument that is not dependent upon your apparently poor grasp of what certain words mean.  It is not an analytical truth of the concept of past eternity that its negation entails a temporal boundary; it does not.  Nor is it analytically implied by the lack of a temporal boundary that a thing is past eternal.  The only thing we've discovered here is that you're both ignorant and not particularly good at words or logic.

Since you have presented no argument that no alternatives to your two exists, your conclusion that I have violated the law of the excluded middle is baseless and thereby rejected.

ps.  I notice you've shut up about benevolence.  That's probably for the best as in addition to showing you to be a liar, it also shows your inability to keep one argument straight from another.

Now, unless you have an argument that is actually valid which answers what I have written, your complaints are dismissed as the groundless twaddle that they are.

Congratulations @Angrboda, you mercilessly raped logic and broke the boundaries of existence. Now, no amount of silly justifications will excuse your sophistry. The "alternatives" you're talking about are simply subtler ways in which the universe could have began, not some sophistic midpoint between a proposition and its direct logical negation. 

@Jehanne tried to take the same sophistic path out by suggesting the no boundary proposal, which turned out to be a description of how the universe began. @polymath257 shamelessly tried to find an alternative to classical logic and proposed a defunct interpretation of QM. And it turned out (Flash news  Hilarious) that classical logic actually describes the mathematical structure of QM perfectly well.

What a silly board of sophists.

The discussion stops here. Once you're past the red line of the laws of thought, you stop being rational. Have a good day.

Congratulations on forgetting the context of the discussion and trammeling headlong into an irrelevant semantic argument. The question at issue is whether the universe began to exist in the sense the term is used in the cosmological argument which requires that there be a some thing and some when prior to the existence of the universe. The Hawking-Hartle proposal, as stated, may, depending upon your interpretation, describe a beginning of the universe but not in the sense employed in the cosmological argument in that it required a cause -- and it can only be considered to have begun to exist in that sense by positing a frame outside it in which beginning has meaning. No external frame exists with Hawking-Hartle and so there is no before the universe in the No Boundary Proposal, and so it did not begin in any meaningful sense wrt the cosmological argument as the way in which it began satisfies the definition of an uncaused cause. But thank you for demonstrating that you have nothing better to offer than warmed-over sophistries like that of William Lane Craig. At least it's better than your argument from the dictionary. And as noted, all that I am proposing is that it is coherent to speak of a third alternative, something you've yet to rebut with anything but moronic arguments about the meaning of words.

As noted, it is not necessary for the Hawking-Hartle hypothesis to be satisfactory for it to show that the idea of an uncaused cause is possible in the case of the universe without directly entailing a contradiction; as such, it's possible for an option that is neither being past eternal nor beginning to exist in the relevant sense to exist. If indeed it in fact is not a third possibility, you need something better than claiming that two nebulous concepts are in some undefined sense each other's negation or the pitiful word games surrounding the meaning of beginning that you've employed here.

That the Hawking-Hartle no boundary proposal shows that it is possible to exist without requiring a cause without entailing a necessary contradiction necessarily entails that either: 1) there is a third alternative, or, 2) the first premise of the cosmological argument, that anything that began to exist requires a cause is unsound. You seem to think that there is a third alternative that will somehow fit as an objection to my overall argument. That does indeed appear to violate the law of the excluded middle. As initially noted, my point was that Kalam cannot be used to demonstrate the existence of God. That point seems thoroughly validated by your resorting to a definition of beginning to exist which is an ersatz definition that violates the premises of the very argument you are depending upon being valid to show that God exists. All you've done is shot yourself in the foot.

Now, you have two options:

1) Show that there is no coherent alternative to beginning to exist in the relevant sense or being past eternal; or,
2) Show that you can demonstrate that God is necessary without reference to Kalam.

Failure to do either vindicates the argument which you were objecting to originally.

All you've shown is that, in addition to making vapid semantic arguments, you are tone-deaf to the equivocation required to posit that Hawking-Hartle requires a beginning. Now, unless you've got an argument that isn't fallacious, I'll consider the matter closed and your objections refuted.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
RE: Atheism and the existence of peanut butter
(September 16, 2021 at 5:00 pm)Angrboda Wrote: All you've shown is that, in addition to making vapid semantic arguments, you are tone-deaf to the equivocation required to posit that Hawking-Hartle requires a beginning.  Now, unless you've got an argument that isn't fallacious, I'll consider the matter closed and your objections refuted.

Major Premise:  A bishop can only move diagonally.

Minor Premise:  The Pope is the bishop of Rome.

Conclusion:  Therefore, the Pope can only move diagonally.



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