Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

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  ) 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.

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.

But you aren’t right. At every turn, you’ve been shown to be laughably, outrageously wrong.

Boru

[Angrboda]

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. 

You really can't keep your arguments straight, can you? You originally proposed that you can't give what you haven't got wrt good and evil, neither of which is a thing in the same sense that imperfection is not a thing here. So by arguing that the can't-give rule doesn't apply to things that are not in fact things in the ontological sense of existing, you've refuted your own rule as you originally applied it to good and evil, neither of which are things in that sense either.

I must say that I enjoy watching you time and time again tripping over your own balls in your attempt to push some quibble or another.

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.

Actually, our own history, the behavior of primitive tribes in the Amazon, and the behavior of the majority of our closest evolutionary relatives seems to indicate that our natural state is one of perpetual war and unmitigated and recurrent episodes of merciless killing. We have developed into a species that to this day has not found a way to leave that heritage behind.

A more plausible explanation for the development of benevolent behaviors lies in our existence as a social species which forms close knit families bonded by the hard genetic logic of kinship selection. We have not begun peaceful, but rather have slowly enlarged our definition of those we consider family by ceaseless iteration of our ability to generalize and group abstract things together. We are not benevolent by nature but rather by invention.

[R00tKiT]

@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  ) 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

Most physicists believed in the luminiferous aether, too. Have fun arguing from authority, if that makes you feel comfortable.

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.

Well, surely, people can design cars, and cars have attributes that people don't. When you look at it more carefully, all we did when designing a car was mental operations on existing matter. A car is the sum of its mechanical components, which in turn are merely an assembly of different materials.

So, the set {human beings+existing matters and materials+knowledge of mechanical engineering+factories} yields a car. And my rule applies, again, on this entire set giving a car.

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.

Okay, I think I understand better what you're confused about. This proposal says that time began together with the universe. But time - I assume you already know- is a dimension of the universe, of the spacetime, it's not some independent frame or some nebulous existence that accompanies the universe, it is a building block of the universe. 

With that said, we can define a time frame allowing us to define a beginning more clearly: any point in this time frame corresponds to an event. The universe's beginning is simply an event, like any other, along this time frame, if we assume, for example, that other events preceded it, then each of them correspond to different consecutive points along our time frame, etc. 

But this is a purely semantic matter, why do you think that the fact that time began renders the word "begin" meaningless??? After all, you're already conceding that time began, and that this sentence in bold is coherent, well, so did the universe..... 

And, even if that were not the case, 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;

How do you get from the Hawking-Hartle hypothesis to the uncaused cause..............?

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.

Come on, @Angrboda, you can do better than that. A universe either began or did not begin, these are not word games or empty semantics. I am walking you through the most basic rule of thought, without which no discussion is possible.

I am not trying to gotcha you here. I am going to be very charitable and assume you accept these basic rules of thoughts, and that you're just confused by some proposals in theoretical physics that seem to contradict them.

1) Show that there is no coherent alternative to beginning to exist in the relevant sense or being past eternal; or,

I can't demonstrate a basic law of thought. It's called law of thought for a reason, we refer to it instead of bickering about it.

You're asking for a demonstration of an axiomatic rule....

2) Show that you can demonstrate that God is necessary without reference to Kalam.

Sure, choose any traditional argument about God and we can discuss it all day. What do you think about the moral argument? Even Kant, who rejected all traditional arguments for theism, acknowledges that God is necessary for moral order. Conscience reveals some kind of a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, and thus point to a lawgiver. In other words, a lawgiver is necessary.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

I think Klorophyll is getting a term confused/mixed up.

When they type the word 'Universe' are they [just] meaning our current understanding of reality? As in 'All of space-time'?

OR

When they type the word they mean the totally of the 'Set' which encompasses all that can/could possibly be?

I.E. "Proposed diety+the reality of which it creates" ?

Working past that sticking point will hopefully be productive.

[Jehanne]

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

Most physicists believed in the luminiferous aether, too. Have fun arguing from authority, if that makes you feel comfortable.

Yeah, pot meet kettle.

I admit that I might have been misquoting Griffiths earlier (it seemed to me that his proof was one of the integral of the Schrodinger equation being stationary with respect to time, which is what the Quantum Eternity Theorem seems to be saying).  While I have read Griffiths, I have not read Jackson at all (do not even own it), which is probably next on the list in trying to understand non-relativistic QM; from there, things get even worse as one ventures into the realm of QFT, with Peskin and Schroeder being the introductory text for 2nd or 3rd year PhD graduate students in physics.  In any case, Professor Griffiths did state, explicitly, in his book that to talk intelligently about QM, one must first understand the theory and mathematics behind QM.  I do not understand it; I admit that.  But, you're no physicist or cosmologist, either, and neither is WLC, and, neither am I.

You can believe, if you wish, that planets move around the Sun because there are invisible angelic beings who are pushing them along in their orbits.  Ditto for the Universe and its existence.  No physicist thiks that either of those hypotheses are necessary, though.  One thing is for sure -- neither of them are testable and neither of them are productive in terms of observing and/or explaining anything in or about our World.

[Angrboda]

Okay, I think I understand better what you're confused about. This proposal says that time began together with the universe. But time - I assume you already know- is a dimension of the universe, of the spacetime, it's not some independent frame or some nebulous existence that accompanies the universe, it is a building block of the universe. 

With that said, we can define a time frame allowing us to define a beginning more clearly: any point in this time frame corresponds to an event. The universe's beginning is simply an event, like any other, along this time frame, if we assume, for example, that other events preceded it, then each of them correspond to different consecutive points along our time frame, etc. 

The bolded is explicitly ruled out by Hawking-Hartle. Therefore, either you have conceded the point, or you are using 'to begin' in a different sense than you have defined here. What is that other sense and is it consistent with the first premise of Kalam?

And, even if that were not the case, 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;

How do you get from the Hawking-Hartle hypothesis to the uncaused cause..............?

The unmoved moves. This is what happens when you eliminate the regression of causes existing in the universe's past. Eliminate the regression, you eliminate Kalam.

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.

Come on, @Angrboda, you can do better than that. A universe either began or did not begin, these are not word games or empty semantics. I am walking you through the most basic rule of thought, without which no discussion is possible.

I am not trying to gotcha you here. I am going to be very charitable and assume you accept these basic rules of thoughts, and that you're just confused by some proposals in theoretical physics that seem to contradict them.

What you are arguing are the basic rules of thought are instead conventions of language which you, to my eye, have inconsistently adopted. The alternative conceptions presented, even if one were the negation of the other, would not themselves be basic rules of thought. The basic rule of thought is that two mutually exclusive possibilities do not admit of a third possibility; it's not the rule of thought that is at issue, but rather what you consider possible given the analytical content of the described two possibilities. As noted, their analytical content does not entail that they are necessary negations of each other, and so you must pursue a contradiction elsewhere. That isn't violating a rule of thought; that's pointing out that what you thought satisfied a specific rule of thought does not necessarily satisfy that rule of thought. The problem is not the rule, but your inability to show that it is satisfied.

2) Show that you can demonstrate that God is necessary without reference to Kalam.

Sure, choose any traditional argument about God and we can discuss it all day. What do you think about the moral argument? Even Kant, who rejected all traditional arguments for theism, acknowledges that God is necessary for moral order. Conscience reveals some kind of a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, and thus point to a lawgiver. In other words, a lawgiver is necessary.

Let's not get sidetracked by an additional topic at this point. As to the moral order, it's not clear that there is a moral order or that a god can provide a foundation for one. As previously remarked, in order to show that a cause is supernatural, you need to show that some entity is able to violate the nomological principles of its local reality. There doesn't appear to be any argument grounded in knowledge of a specific reality that would entail the existence of a violation; any arguments not grounded in knowledge fail as an appeal to ignorance. This is why I hold that only ontological arguments can provide evidence for a god -- arguments grounded explicitly in the laws of thought. Your attempt to find a contradiction in (not (began to exist) and not (past eternal)) does not appear to be grounded in the laws of thought so much as it does in the way you choose to make use of certain words.

---

Well, surely, people can design cars, and cars have attributes that people don't. When you look at it more carefully, all we did when designing a car was mental operations on existing matter. A car is the sum of its mechanical components, which in turn are merely an assembly of different materials.

Are you not, then, simply once again showing that "you can't give what you haven't got" is not a valid rule?

[The Architect Of Fate]

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

You really can't keep your arguments straight, can you?  You originally proposed that you can't give what you haven't got wrt good and evil, neither of which is a thing in the same sense that imperfection is not a thing here.  So by arguing that the can't-give rule doesn't apply to things that are not in fact things in the ontological sense of existing, you've refuted your own rule as you originally applied it to good and evil, neither of which are things in that sense either.

I must say that I enjoy watching you time and time again tripping over your own balls in your attempt to push some quibble or another.

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.

Actually, our own history, the behavior of primitive tribes in the Amazon, and the behavior of the majority of our closest evolutionary relatives seems to indicate that our natural state is one of perpetual war and unmitigated and recurrent episodes of merciless killing.  We have developed into a species that to this day has not found a way to leave that heritage behind.

A more plausible explanation for the development of benevolent behaviors lies in our existence as a social species which forms close knit families bonded by the hard genetic logic of kinship selection.  We have not begun peaceful, but rather have slowly enlarged our definition of those we consider family by ceaseless iteration of our ability to generalize and group abstract things together.  We are not benevolent by nature but rather by invention.

Don't forget the casual cannibalism

[LadyForCamus]

@Klorophyll

When does a snowflake “begin to exist?”

[LadyForCamus]

[quote='Klorophyll' pid='2062218' dateline='1631829009']
Okay, I think I understand better what you're confused about. This proposal says that time began together with the universe. But time - I assume you already know- is a dimension of the universe, of the spacetime, it's not some independent frame or some nebulous existence that accompanies the universe, it is a building block of the universe. 

With that said, we can define a time frame allowing us to define a beginning more clearly: any point in this time frame corresponds to an event. The universe's beginning is simply an event

How can there be a time/space creation event without time and space? For someone who loves to argue that universes cannot simply pop into existence, that seems to be exactly what you are arguing for in this thread.

[Brian37]

For any existing universe, the two propositions, P :"A universe began to exist" and Q :"A universe has an eternal past" are mutually exclusive,  one of them must be true, Q is simply non-P. This is the basic law of excluded middle. 

Unless you're willing to deny the most basic rules of logic and delve into sophistry, you are forced to pick one of these propositions. 

What if there was a theory/hypothesis where (looking back in time, from todays point of view) there is a point at which time (and space) break down? Doesnt our universe "start to exist"?
What if, at some point, time (and the universe) start together? Didnt the universe exist for all of time? Since eternal means "for all of time", isnt the universe eternal?


That is, why your methodology, WLC-like, of arguing with (intuitive) assumptions about the fundamentals of reality, which we know to be not-intuitive, and then applying logic to those, is doomed to lead you to wrong conclusions. You better go with observation and evidence, and those currently are telling us (as has been told again and again): "We dont know".
Aa Polymath already pointed out, when, at quantum level, everything becomes a wave function, a "distribution of probability" influenced by the fact if you are observing or not, then collapsing into what we perceive as our subjective reality, well, then exercises in logic like the above are turning into being "not evern wrong".

I am of the mindset that the utopia of "Unified Theory" will never be that. I think ultimately everything is a crap shoot. I think atoms popping into and out of existence is a math that can never be perfect, because reality will never be.