God, Burritos, and Perfection

[Theftz22]

So I would have liked to have debated people on my post that I made in the Is God...PG Version thread, but I was running low on time, and I realized the posts would make it hard for other discussions to continue. It was suggested that I make a thread...that about brings us up to now.

This thread seems to be slipping away. I'll bump with a long *** copy paste of a post from another forum. Topic was what are your beliefs on god.

"Well, my position depends highly upon the definition of god given. There are literally thousands of gods over the course of human history and my position on each one will obviously be different. People sometimes define god as love or something ridiculous like that which I of course must believe in that god because I don't deny its existence (though it's stupid to place a label over something we already have named and ignore the basic attributes god nearly always has). My general position is weak atheism, that is the lack of belief in a god. I do not assert that god in general does not exist (strong atheism), because I could not hope to possibly disprove the existence of every possible definition of god, but I rather assert that there is no good reason or evidence to believe in one, and thus my only burden of proof is disproving theistic claims. However, there are certain gods I believe can be falsified, and in regards to these I am a strong atheist. Prominent among these is the Judeo-Christian god and Allah. For sake of familiarity, I'll focus on the Judeo-Christian god. Before I do that, I'll mention two things: One, I enjoy conversation with an intelligent theist or deist but I generally cba to discuss those that take the historical claims of certain religions seriously and especially literalists. Secondly, I have a problem with the way the term agnostic is often used. A theist is someone who believes in a god and anyone else is a type of atheist, that includes I don't know. Now, to focus on the Judeo-Christian god.

The most basic way of proving that the J-C god does not exist is to show that he is internally contradictory. Firstly, omnipotence contradicts itself. Can god create a task that he cannot perform? If he can, he cannot perform the task and is not omnipotent. If he cannot, he is already not omnipotent. Next, omniscience contradicts omnipotence. Can god pose a question to which he cannot answer? If he can, he is not omniscient. If he cannot, he is not omnipotent. Also, an omniscient god knows his own future and his actions before he can commit then. In this sense, he loses free will and is not omnipotent. He would literally be the most limited being in the universe, only able to perform one exact action at any given time, his actions plotted out linearly with no option for choice. If he does not know his future, then he is not omniscient. Additionally, this god is claimed as being perfect, yet needs worship. A perfect being does not have any needs or deficiencies, but the J-C god regards not believing in it as the only unforgivable sin, punishable by eternal torture in hell. Additionally, perfect justice and perfect mercy are incompatible. This is because justice is to treat someone as they deserve to be treated but mercy is to treat someone better than they deserve to be treated. The concept of hell also contradicts the idea of both mercy and justice, because it promises infinite punishment for finite "crime". Another precept of Christianity is that anyone, except the non-believer, can avoid punishment regardless of what they did in life by atoning to god in the end. This also contradicts the property of perfect justice.

The next set of contradictions are in reality. A god that is omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient knows about evil, could prevent evil, and wants to prevent evil. But this all could not be true, why then is their evil? The typical response to this is the free will defense, but I will address this later. The next bit is the argument from non-belief. That is, if god does not want us all to go to hell and therefore believe in him, why does he not make his existence readily known? God, being omniscient, knows what it would take to convince everyone of his existence. Being omnipotent, he can execute said actions. Being benevolent, he wants to have everyone to avoid hell. But why then are there non-believers? The theist could turn again to free will, but this fails. God making his presence known does not interfere with free will. This is made more prevalent by the fact that people in other areas of the world grow up to believe in a "false" god. God could in his almightiness instantly reveal which religion was true. And to prove his existence, at the bare minimum I believe a few miracles that could be captured now that we have recording technology would be nice.

Next we turn to the arguments for the existence of the J-C god. I will focus on three of the best, most popular arguments. Additionally I will include the free will defense, which is not an argument for his existence, but a counter argument to the problem of evil.

1. The Kalam Cosmological Argument

The formulation:
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe has a cause.

The theist will then go on to establish what properties the cause must have had, this includes timeless, spaceless, immaterial, transcendent, personal, and vastly powerful.

The problems:
1. It assumes that we can even go sequentially prior to the big bang. The big bang being the beginning of time, it is meaningless to go sequentially prior to time. As many have pointed out, this is like saying "North of the North Pole". This contradicts the statement "the universe began to exist", for it did not begin in the sense that there may be nothing prior to it.
2. It applies causality to anything "before the big bang". Assuming we can even go before the big bang, as causality is a property of time, space, and the universe as we know it, it is unjustified to apply it to anything before the universe. Specifically, when the argument says everything that begins to exist has a cause, this is only justified inside the universe itself. In this way the argument commits a fallacy of composition, that is assuming that because everything within a system has a property, the system itself must have that property. An example, humans are made up of atoms. Atoms are not visible to the naked eye. But a human is visible to the naked eye. Similarly, all things within the universe that begin to exist have a cause, but it does not follow that the universe itself had a cause.
3. The first premise is an assumption even of the universe itself. That is, nothing that we observe truly "begins to exist" as is meant by the argument. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. We never see things begin to exist, only that we see them change form. The first premise is an assumption.
4. It relies on a faulty concept of "nothing". The argument relies on the fact that before the big bang there was nothing. But nothing cannot exist, if it did, it would be something. Anything that exists has properties, as shown by the law of identity. The "nothingness" used the kalam is a myth, the nothingness scientists speculate could have existed is actually believed to be able to give rise to the universe, see A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
5. The hypothesis asserted has no explanatory power and leads to contradictions. In order for the hypothesis that this god created this universe to be used, it must explain itself. How did god create the universe? By what mechanic? Additionally it leads to contradictions. A being that exists outside of time cannot make an action. An action is sequential by nature and involves cause and effect. This cannot happen in a state of timelessness. What does it even mean to exist outside of time? Existing is done sequentially, from one moment to the next.
6. It gives no reason for god's existence. God is said to be timeless and therefore not denote a cause. Even accepting this, god must have some reason for existing rather than not. The argument presumes that god's existence is the natural state before the big bang, which is just asserted and never proved.
7. It assumes A theory time. I'm not educated enough on this subject to talk about it, but just know that the whole argument would be invalid if B theory time were true. The jury is still out, but it's shaky ground to rest an entire argument on. You should research this to learn more, here's a start.

2. The Fine-Tuning Argument
The Formulation
P1: The fine tuning of the universe for life is either due to chance, physical necessity, or design.
P2: It is neither due to chance or physical necessity.
C: It is due to design.

The problems:
1. The universe is not fine tuned for life. It is estimated that less than 2% of the universe could even support life. Additionally, only .00000000117% of the Earth's mass is biomass.
2. It assumes the probability of each possible set of constants is equal. We only make probability judgments like this if we have multiple data points.
3. The constants are linked. I'm not good at explaining this one so "In order for the probability argument to be valid, the fundamental constants under consideration have to be independent. That is, one cannot claim that the gravitational constant and the speed of expansion of the universe were individually tuned, since they are clearly related. The electromagnetic force is mediated by massless photons which travel at the speed of light, so therefore the strength of this force is likely related to the speed of light."
4. Certain sets of constants are impossible. They will not be mathematically self consistent.
5. It projects the idea that our life could not exist under certain conditions, and assumes that no life could exist under certain conditions. In fact, we have no idea what type of life form could have emerged in a different universe. The argument assumes carbon based life. Evolution explains that the organisms evolve to fit the surroundings, hence why it seems fine-tuned.
5. Computer simulations suggest that not all of the purportedly "fine-tuned" parameters may be as fine-tuned as has been claimed. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range, and concluded that "... a wide variation of constants of physics leads to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve, although human life need not exist in such universes".
6. The multiverse theory. This is the theory that our universe is just one of many, each with different fundamental constants. It's pure speculation at this point, but that puts it on even ground with the god hypothesis for the fine tuning of the universe.
7. The anthropic principle. We are living in exactly the type of universe we would expect to see considering how the fundamental constants are. ""The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."

3. The Ontological Argument
The Formulation
P1: God is the greatest being conceivable.
P2: God exists in the mind.
P3: To exist in the mind and reality is greater than to exist in the mind alone.
C: Therefore, god must exist in the mind and reality.

The Problems:
1. It confuses the idea of something with the thing itself. God does not exist in the mind in the same sense as we mean by existence. The only way a thing itself can exist is in reality. It is not god which is in my mind but the idea of god. The idea of god in my mind cannot create universes and perform miracles.
2. It treats existence as a property. The argument poses all these properties of god and says that god would be greater if he had one more property: existence. But existence is not a property. It is the condition a thing must have to even exhibit properties. For instance, a green, slimy object is not green and slimy unless it actually exists. Existence cannot be treated as a property, it is what enables things to have properties.
3. It relies on a subjective concept of greatness. What is greater than another is opinion. One could simply reject the third premise that existence is greater than non-existence.

And now for the free will defense:
"A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good."

The Problems:
1. Free will is falsified by omniscience. God's all knowing nature means that he knows the future of all people and their actions before you execute them. This means that you are inevitably going to do one thing rather than the other, there is no other possible outcome, and thus no free will.
2. God could create beings that freely chose good over evil. His omnipotence could create creatures with free will that simply did not freely choose evil.
3. It does not address natural evil. That is, things such as disease, natural disasters, and aging bodies. These are not caused by an action of any free being and thus is not covered by the free will defense.
4. God could intervene to stop acts of evil (at the very least gratuitous evil) before they happen without violating free will. He could allow beings to freely choose evil but stop them before they do it. Now if he did this in all cases then there would be no choice, but he could intervene in only gratuitous evil, such as by killing Hitler. Also, think this scene."

Then someone actually brought up Pascal's Wager (LOL) so I commented on that.

"The Formulation

The Problems
1. It assumes the probability of god existing is exactly equal to him not existing. Self explanatory.
2. It discounts religions. Many religions maintain that the only way to salvation is to believe in their specific god. This shows that basic belief in god is not considered a guaranteed way to heaven, but their must be another wager of itself to pick a specific religion.
3. Belief is assumed to have zero cost. I'll just copy paste this, "For one thing, if you go through life believing a lie, that is a bad thing in itself. Besides that, there is more to being a believer than just saying, "Okay, I believe now," and getting on with your life. Serious believers spend a lot of their time in church, and contribute a lot of money as well. There's a reason why some towns have very affluent looking buildings for churches, and why large and elaborate cathedrals are possible: they're funded by folks who donate a tenth of their income throughout their lives to tithing. This is surely quite a waste if the object of worship isn't real. That's to say nothing of the persecution of other groups that's been instigated in the name of God throughout the ages. Also, in the US, churches don't have to pay taxes, which includes property tax. Property tax is what goes to schools, so all the land that churches own is sucking money out of schools. When "God Did It" becomes an acceptable answer, there is little incentive to continue exploring the question. More damaging, the "success" of this theory encourages one to apply it to other areas of human understanding. Practiced in this manner, theism can actively discourage human knowledge by compelling people to follow an arbitrary code of conduct, rather than one based on logic and reason."
4. It assumes that one has complete control over your own beliefs and can change at any time arbitrarily. For instance, I could not just say right now "I believe in god", it would be false. God is omniscient and knows your true beliefs.
5. It assumes that god judges non-believers completely apart from their actions (assumes the major religions are true I guess. ).

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

To be fair, many believers (Dre can tell you more about this one) go off the assumption that god exists in the same non-temporal sphere of existence as whatever there was "before" the big bang (as detailed above). But yeah, the points are valid. The JC god simply cannot exist because his qualities are inherently conflicting.

 

[Seikend]

I personally feel that "Can God create a task he cannot perform" and "Can he pose a question he cannot answer" are weak arguments against the JC God.

Take the classic example of can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.

Omnipotence is unlimited power, and in the context of the task in hand implies physical power. Or at least, the question is cleverly phrased to suggest that physical power is what is being tested.

However, the example is not a task of power at all. For God to be able to would be a logical impossibility. No amount of physical power or indeed any power could make such a task possible. It is literally, an impossible task.

It's a strawman at best. The example questions whether God can do everything, not if He has unlimited power. These are not the same thing. God can still have omnipotence while not being able to perform every task.



Good post, theology is a pretty new topic to me still so this is definetely helpful to me.

 

[rvkevin]

Point one of the fine-tuning argument is flawed and point one of Pascal's wager is flawed. The fine-tuning argument only addresses that a universe will have life. It does not address how hospitable a universe will be towards life. Regarding Pascal's wager, it does not suggest a 50-50 split regarding the probability of God. It suggests that even if the chance of a God is minuscule (although non-zero), the mathematical expectation of the payoff would still be positive in favor of belief. However, disregarding these points do nothing to improve the status that one should give to these arguments.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I personally feel that "Can God create a task he cannot perform" and "Can he pose a question he cannot answer" are weak arguments against the JC God.

Take the classic example of can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.

Omnipotence is unlimited power, and in the context of the task in hand implies physical power. Or at least, the question is cleverly phrased to suggest that physical power is what is being tested.

However, the example is not a task of power at all. For God to be able to would be a logical impossibility. No amount of physical power or indeed any power could make such a task possible. It is literally, an impossible task.

Yes. And the existence of impossible tasks makes omnipotence logically contradictory. Remember, you're asking for unlimited power-the ability to do anything, be anything, know anything. The fact that it's logically impossible to perform certain acts or become certain things means that omnipotence, the ability to do anything or become anything, infinite power, is logically impossible.

It's a strawman at best. The example questions whether God can do everything, not if He has unlimited power. These are not the same thing. God can still have omnipotence while not being able to perform every task.



Good post, theology is a pretty new topic to me still so this is definetely helpful to me.

There's not really a difference.

 

[Dre89]

Seikend it's not really theology, it's more philosophy of religion, but the two are obviously linked.

I like your stuff Underdogs. I like that you instead of just posing questions such as the argument from evil, (which I'll just call AoE from now on), you actually address the thiest's response to it too. Not enough athiests do that.

However, I do think there were a number of flaws in your posts, although I really liked it and think you'll be a great addition to the board.

I'm bound to forget a few things, but I'll try to cover as much as possible.

Firtsly, you definitions of omnipotence and omniscience are straw-mans. Omnipotence does not mean the ability to defy logic, it simply means the ability to create being. Potency refers to the potential to actuate certain states of being (actualities) so that's all that is meant by saying omnipotence (although some thiests disagree with that). As for omniscience, it is argued that God is actuality, and that God has no act He is yet to do. He does not exist in time as we do, He is not waiting for our next actions, they have already happened for Him.

This is a really technical point that others may not have picked up on, but you failed to mention that the free will defence (or at least versions of it) also functions as a response to the non-belief argument.

There was also a few flaws in your response to the cosmological argument. You said we cannot go sequentially prior to the big bang, but thiests aren't saying there was anything sequentially prior to the big bang. Many thiests posit eternal causation, that God and creation exist eternally, the former being self-necessary, the latter being contingent on the former.

Secondly, claiming that nothing occured prior to the big bang is an equally metaphysical claim as thiesm, so if going sequentially prior to the big bang is flawed, then so is athiesm. Similarily, the multi-verse theory is also an entirely metaphysical assumption, but is even worse for nothing points towards it. It is not a claim out of necessity unlike thiesm, it is a claim out desperation to posit an explanation of the origin of the universe whilst retaining athiesm. Not only that, but it doesn't even solve the problem. The number of universes in existences doesn't change the fact that there stills needs to be an explanation of their causation. Even if you posit an infinite number of universes, that doesn't change the fact they needed to be caused, and in fact positing the causation of an inifnite number is more logically and mathematically implausible than y, and in fact there would be no need to posit the existence of multiple universes in the first place.

What you neglect is that thiests aren't positing God's existence as accidental or contingent, that is, being one of several possibilities. They are positing it as necessary, the only sufficient explanation. For example, my problem with athiesm is that it assume the first cause (or ultimate reality if you believe in infinite regress) is the assembly of multiple complex principles (such as space, time, motion etc.) and I feel the first cause could not be such an assembly, or any assembly at all. I can expand on that if you wish. That would suggest that the universe needs a cause, because inductively speaking, everything in the universe has a cause.

This is using the line of reasoning athiests use to discard the existence of God. So if you want to reject the notion of the universe necessitating a cause, you need to reject inductive thinking. But in doing so, you reject your initial grounds for athiesm in the first place.

That's enough for one post. I'm sure there's a lot I've left out.

 

[Dre89]

I think part of my second last patagraph got deleted.

My point was, that the inductive thinking athiests use to discard miracles and God as they have never been observed, also suggests that the universe needs a cause, as a material being that has no prior cause has never been observed.

 

[Seikend]

Yes. And the existence of impossible tasks makes omnipotence logically contradictory. Remember, you're asking for unlimited power-the ability to do anything, be anything, know anything. The fact that it's logically impossible to perform certain acts or become certain things means that omnipotence, the ability to do anything or become anything, infinite power, is logically impossible.





There's not really a difference.

Power does not mean the ability to do anything. Power is a source, an input. Unlimited power does not mean unlimited output.

 

[rvkevin]

My point was, that the inductive thinking atheists use to discard miracles and God as they have never been observed, also suggests that the universe needs a cause, as a material being that has no prior cause has never been observed.

Atheists don't discard miracles and God because they have never been observed. In fact, many of the supposed effects of miracles of God have been observed, they just don't increase the probability of God because of Bayes theorem. Atheists tend to reject them because of their low prior probability and corresponding poor evidence to raise that prior probability. If you want to show that this point of view requires the universe to have a cause, then you must demonstrate, using Bayes theorem (please show what inputs you use and how you came up with them, and for some consistency they should be somewhat similar to what an atheist would use...), why this is so. To summarize, the reason you gave for your claim does nothing to support your claim and I proposed how you could substantiate your claim. Until you do so, your claim has zero weight.

 

[Theftz22]

Firtsly, you definitions of omnipotence and omniscience are straw-mans. Omnipotence does not mean the ability to defy logic, it simply means the ability to create being. Potency refers to the potential to actuate certain states of being (actualities) so that's all that is meant by saying omnipotence (although some thiests disagree with that).

I have always interpreted omnipotence literally, as all-powerful, because potency most usually refers simply to strength or power (when not talking about the sexual meaning of the word). I'll accept that attribute as you describe it, but omnipotence seems like a misnomer for it.

But even accepting this definition of omnipotence, how does this affect the omnipotence contradiction? Let me use the rock example for reference. You would say, "a rock so heavy god cannot lift it" is a logically impossible thing, so him not being able to create does not infringe on his omnipotence. But why exactly is it that it is a logically impossible object? You might say, "Because god is omnipotent. He can lift all rocks." Wait, so the reason god cannot create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it is because he can lift all rocks? On this account there does not seem to be anything inherently logically contradictory about the rock itself but that the contradiction stems from god's ability to both lift all rocks, and create all rocks. You can see that what makes the rock logically incoherent is not anything of the rock but of the emergent ability of god to lift all rocks, stemming from his god's already asserted omnipotence. Therefore this claimed logical impossibility is not only circular in nature, but ultimately does show that there is a contradiction in omnipotence, because the impossibility of the rock is only due to omnipotence.

As for omniscience, it is argued that God is actuality, and that God has no act He is yet to do. He does not exist in time as we do, He is not waiting for our next actions, they have already happened for Him.

God must act temporally not only because of the sequential nature of action itself, but because his actions in regards to the universe are done within the temporal restraints of the universe. By this I mean that the universe operates by time, and god makes actions that intervene, at a specific time, with the universe. I won't go into the specific doctrines of miracles and divine intervention within religions, but with a tenant central to all of theism; the creation of the universe by god. God would have to have made that specific action at t=0, a specific point in space time. And so long as god is acting in time, he must be said to have knowledge of that action before doing it.

And I see you recognize all of our actions are already mapped out prior to us doing them.

This is a really technical point that others may not have picked up on, but you failed to mention that the free will defence (or at least versions of it) also functions as a response to the non-belief argument.

I do not believe it can, at least under the assumption that everyone has some potential to believe in god given enough evidence. As long as you accept that premise, it follows logically that god must know what this is for everyone, being omniscient. Being omnipotent, he can give them said evidence, and being benevolent, wants to give them that evidence. And giving them that evidence does not infringe on free will, because they still ultimately freely choose to believe, just that they will choose to believe because they have been given enough evidence. This is just as it is not an infringement on free will to be given a proof that 2+2=4.

There was also a few flaws in your response to the cosmological argument. You said we cannot go sequentially prior to the big bang, but thiests aren't saying there was anything sequentially prior to the big bang. Many thiests posit eternal causation, that God and creation exist eternally, the former being self-necessary, the latter being contingent on the former.

You'll have to explain to me what you mean exactly by eternal. To say that god created the universe is to say he caused it to exist. And as far as I can grasp, anything that causes anything to exist must exist prior to its creation, as causation only works in one direction. When you say that creation exists eternally, are you implying the universe is infinite?

Secondly, claiming that nothing occured prior to the big bang is an equally metaphysical claim as thiesm, so if going sequentially prior to the big bang is flawed, then so is athiesm.

I would say that claiming that "before the big bang" is meaningless, is a metaphysical claim. However, I said going prior to the big bang is flawed, but atheism does not necessarily assert anything prior to the big bang, so what makes you say that it is flawed?

Similarily, the multi-verse theory is also an entirely metaphysical assumption, but is even worse for nothing points towards it. It is not a claim out of necessity unlike thiesm, it is a claim out desperation to posit an explanation of the origin of the universe whilst retaining athiesm. Not only that, but it doesn't even solve the problem. The number of universes in existences doesn't change the fact that there stills needs to be an explanation of their causation. Even if you posit an infinite number of universes, that doesn't change the fact they needed to be caused, and in fact positing the causation of an inifnite number is more logically and mathematically implausible than y, and in fact there would be no need to posit the existence of multiple universes in the first place.

The multiverse hypothesis is not meant to explain the origin of the universe, it is meant to explain the fine-tuning. Of course the explanation of their existence is not a part of the hypothesis, that's not what it is attempting to explain. So you could say that it is a claim out of necessity to explain the fine-tuning of the universe. All I'm tauting it as is an alternate explanation that is on at least equal ground with the god hypothesis.

Btw, it wouldn't necessarily be fair to say that "nothing points towards it". The idea stems from one interpretation of quantum physics, it's not like some guy was just sitting there and came up with it out of the blue. But that's another issue.

What you neglect is that thiests aren't positing God's existence as accidental or contingent, that is, being one of several possibilities. They are positing it as necessary, the only sufficient explanation.

Obviously, and sometimes atheists like to suggest others.

For example, my problem with athiesm is that it assume the first cause (or ultimate reality if you believe in infinite regress) is the assembly of multiple complex principles (such as space, time, motion etc.) and I feel the first cause could not be such an assembly, or any assembly at all. I can expand on that if you wish. That would suggest that the universe needs a cause, because inductively speaking, everything in the universe has a cause.

This is using the line of reasoning athiests use to discard the existence of God. So if you want to reject the notion of the universe necessitating a cause, you need to reject inductive thinking. But in doing so, you reject your initial grounds for athiesm in the first place.

One would not necessarily need to reject induction in general to reject making inductive statements regarding anything outside of the universe that are based on observations from within. Your mistaking general induction with scientific induction. Induction in general would be that because we have only seen things which have causes, we should assume everything has a cause. But a more scientific induction would be that under this certain set of conditions we have only seen things that have causes, therefore we should assume everything within those conditions must have a cause. In this case the condition would be the universe, or especially our galaxy from what we can observe. This is the essence of science, that given the exact same circumstances and conditions, the same result will occur every time. We do not say that because things float in deep space we should inductively assume everything will float. General induction has been shown to yield faulty conclusions but scientific induction has proven accurate. We could not use scientific induction to assume that the universe as a whole must have a cause, because conditions within the universe are not the same as those outside of it.

Also wondering why you think induction is the grounds for atheism.

 

[Dre89]

Rvkevin- I don't see athiests showing their inputs, so I don't see why I need to.

The problem isn't solved either. Athiests concluding that God is improbable is still a result of inductive thinking. For example, if we lived in a mythical world, where fairies, dragons, trolls etc. with supernatural powers all existed, the existence of the diety I am positing would be far more probable even to athiests, for the supernatural would have been observed in the world. It's the fact that nothing like God is observed in the world that athiests find God's existence so improbable (there also the deductive arguments from evil and non-belief, but my argument here is only addressing the "absence of evidence is evidence of probable absence" argument).


So again, God is deemed so improbable based on inductive experience. Therefore, my argument still stands, that inductive experience suggests that the universe necessitates a cause, seeing as every other material beings needs a cause.

I have always interpreted omnipotence literally, as all-powerful, becausee potency most usually refers simply to strength or power (when not talking about the sexual meaning of the word). I'll accept that attribute as you describe it, but omnipotence seems like a misnomer for it.


But even accepting this definition of omnipotence, how does this affect the omnipotence contradiction? Let me use the rock example for reference. You would say, "a rock so heavy god cannot lift it" is a logically impossible thing, so him not being able to create does not infringe on his omnipotence. But why exactly is it that it is a logically impossible object? You might say, "Because god is omnipotent. He can lift all rocks." Wait, so the reason god cannot create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it is because he can lift all rocks? On this account there does not seem to be anything inherently logically contradictory about the rock itself but that the contradiction stems from god's ability to both lift all rocks, and create all rocks. You can see that what makes the rock logically incoherent is not anything of the rock but of the emergent ability of god to lift all rocks, stemming from his god's already asserted omnipotence. Therefore this claimed logical impossibility is not only circular in nature, but ultimately does show that there is a contradiction in omnipotence, because the impossibility of the rock is only due to omnipotence.

I don't understand what your point is. God's omnipotence is what makes it a logical contradiction, but again, my definition of omnipotence does not require the ability to defy the laws of logic. I don't see how the rock comprimises the plausability of Him being able to create being.

God must act temporally not only because of the sequential nature of action itself, but because his actions in regards to the universe are done within the temporal restraints of the universe. By this I mean that the universe operates by time, and god makes actions that intervene, at a specific time, with the universe. I won't go into the specific doctrines of miracles and divine intervention within religions, but with a tenant central to all of theism; the creation of the universe by god. God would have to have made that specific action at t=0, a specific point in space time. And so long as god is acting in time, he must be said to have knowledge of that action before doing it.

And I see you recognize all of our actions are already mapped out prior to us doing them.

Well if space and time were created, then what created them wouldn't exist in a sequence of events, for it wouldn't exist in time. Therefore, the event by event sequence we observe would technically be an illusion.

And yes, all of God's actions (or act) are at once, for they are eternal. It's not as if God is sitting up in eternity looking down at sequential time, waiting for His moment to act, because that would mean God Himself would be in sequential, changing time.

It doesn't contradict free will, because knowledge of the future only contradicts free will when A can tell B what action he will make in the future. This is contradictory, because A has seen the future, but has the free will to decide whether to tell B what his action will be, for whether he tells him will affect the future, and A did not see both future consequences.

However, in God's case there is no contradiction, because as I've said before, God is act. God's mind does not operate in a sequential manner, so it's not as if He's sitting there, comtemplating how to affect the future, for there is no future for Him, there is no though or action He is yet to make.

I do not believe it can, at least under the assumption that everyone has some potential to believe in god given enough evidence. As long as you accept that premise, it follows logically that god must know what this is for everyone, being omniscient. Being omnipotent, he can give them said evidence, and being benevolent, wants to give them that evidence. And giving them that evidence does not infringe on free will, because they still ultimately freely choose to believe, just that they will choose to believe because they have been given enough evidence. This is just as it is not an infringement on free will to be given a proof that 2+2=4.

What makes you think He hasn't given them sufficient evidence? Your example said they would retain the freedom to reject the evidence, so what makes you think this hasn't happened?

You see, the reason you assume God has not provided sufficient evidence is because not everyone has accepted it. But if it is only sufficient evidence if someone accepts it, meaning everyone would accept it, then free will has been comprimised.

You'll have to explain to me what you mean exactly by eternal. To say that god created the universe is to say he caused it to exist. And as far as I can grasp, anything that causes anything to exist must exist prior to its creation, as causation only works in one direction. When you say that creation exists eternally, are you implying the universe is infinite?

Well this is where it gets tricky. I don't like the eternal creation idea, because they're saying that a contingent existence (creation), is eternal, yet only a necessary existence can be eternal, and only existence could be eternal, yet in this case you have both God and creation.

I don't really have a sufficient answer to this question to be honest. The reason why I retain my thiesm however, is that I feel that athiesm still has the same problem, plus more (I'm only a thiest because I find athiesm to be impossible), and then I have other reasons for believing in God.[/I]

I would say that claiming that "before the big bang" is meaningless, is a metaphysical claim. However, I said going prior to the big bang is flawed, but atheism does not necessarily assert anything prior to the big bang, so what makes you say that it is flawed?

It's flawed by your logic because it asserts knowledge of what is prior to the big bang, ie. nothing. It is equally metaphysical.

To draw a bad analogy, imagine that there is a marathon underway. You (as a spectator) rock up to the finish line, having not seen any of the marathon, and see a runner, with no other competitors in sight, cross the finish line. At this point you have no knowledge of what position he finished, so to claim that there were runners who finished prior to him, or to claim he finished first, are equally positive claims, they both earn the same burden of proof. The default position is not that no one finished prior to him, it's that you do not know whether anyone finished prior to him.

The multiverse hypothesis is not meant to explain the origin of the universe, it is meant to explain the fine-tuning. Of course the explanation of their existence is not a part of the hypothesis, that's not what it is attempting to explain. So you could say that it is a claim out of necessity to explain the fine-tuning of the universe. All I'm tauting it as is an alternate explanation that is on at least equal ground with the god hypothesis.

Btw, it wouldn't necessarily be fair to say that "nothing points towards it". The idea stems from one interpretation of quantum physics, it's not like some guy was just sitting there and came up with it out of the blue. But that's another issue.

But it's still far more flawed than thiesm. If the multi-verse theory is used to explain the fine-tuning, then there would need to be an infnite number of universes, so that there is an infinite number of combinations of constants, so that one ends up producing the universe we have. This then falls to all the logical and mathematical problems infinite regress theory has.

Even the nature of its assertion is flawed. It's only necessary if you consider it necessary for the explanation to be material, but this is merely assumed. Retaining a material explanation is not necessary, and displays the bias of the athiest. Secondly, it is a flawed claim because it is a material explanation that has no material evidence whatsoever. The fact that you're jumping into metaphysics to make the claim suggests a non-physical explanation is more plausible than a material one that has no material evidence.

Obviously, and sometimes atheists like to suggest others.

My point was not that there is no alternate rational explanation to thiesm, but that you treat thiestic arguments as if they concede that there are alternate rational explanations.

One would not necessarily need to reject induction in general to reject making inductive statements regarding anything outside of the universe that are based on observations from within. Your mistaking general induction with scientific induction. Induction in general would be that because we have only seen things which have causes, we should assume everything has a cause. But a more scientific induction would be that under this certain set of conditions we have only seen things that have causes, therefore we should assume everything within those conditions must have a cause. In this case the condition would be the universe, or especially our galaxy from what we can observe. This is the essence of science, that given the exact same circumstances and conditions, the same result will occur every time. We do not say that because things float in deep space we should inductively assume everything will float. General induction has been shown to yield faulty conclusions but scientific induction has proven accurate. We could not use scientific induction to assume that the universe as a whole must have a cause, because conditions within the universe are not the same as those outside of it.

Also wondering why you think induction is the grounds for atheism.

I don't think induction is the sole grounding for athiesm. I know that the arguments from evil and non-belief are deductive grounds for athiesm. I'm just referring specifically to the inductive grounds upon which certain athiests build their arguments upon. I don't consider addressing the inductive grounding to be a straw-man, because several prominent athiests use induction. Just as I don't think it is straw-manning for an athiest to attack eternal creation theory, despite the fact I personally disagree with it, because several prominent thiests posit it.

Also, you response avoided the million dollar question. The question is whether these "conditions" that form the universe are subject to the same laws of causation as everything they encompass. Inductively speaking, these conditions do not appear so fundamentally different in composition to contignent existences for us to inductively conclude that they are not contingent.

 

[rvkevin]

So again, God is deemed so improbable based on inductive experience. Therefore, my argument still stands, that inductive experience suggests that the universe necessitates a cause, seeing as every other material beings needs a cause.

This is a non-sequitor. The first is derived by Bayes theorem. The second is derived from a poor/lack of understanding of Bayes theorem. For this reason, they are not analogous. If you want to show that they use the same reasoning, then you must use Bayes theorem. If you want your conclusion to be mathematically valid, then you must use Bayes theorem. If you don't care if your conclusion is reliable, then don't bother, but don't expect anyone else to think your argument stands when you use a flawed methodology.

 

[ballin4life]

The problem isn't solved either. Athiests concluding that God is improbable is still a result of inductive thinking. For example, if we lived in a mythical world, where fairies, dragons, trolls etc. with supernatural powers all existed, the existence of the diety I am positing would be far more probable even to athiests, for the supernatural would have been observed in the world.

No. In that case, the "supernatural" would be natural.

So again, God is deemed so improbable based on inductive experience. Therefore, my argument still stands, that inductive experience suggests that the universe necessitates a cause, seeing as every other material beings needs a cause.

Define cause. What caused me to snap my fingers just now?

Also, explain why you can't have an infinite chain of causation? I have asked you this before, and you maintain that it is "mathematically proven" that it can't work, but you have never elaborated further.

Also, as I have said many times before, the "first cause" argument does not justify the myriad properties people assign to God. It doesn't follow that the first cause has to have a will, or be conscious, or be benevolent, or be omnipotent, or be omniscient, or anything else. I am especially concerned with the justification for asserting that the first cause has consciousness and a will. Saying that God is being would seem to me to imply that God is a natural principle which does not have a will, just like gravity doesn't have a will.

 

[Savon]

I strongest argument that I know of in support of the existence of a God is the 5 ways by St. Thomas Aquinas.

The First Way: Argument from Motion

1.

Our senses prove that some things are in motion.
2.

Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion.
3.

Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion.
4.

Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another).
5.

Therefore nothing can move itself.
6.

Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else.
7.

The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum.
8.

Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

The Second Way: Argument from Efficient Causes

1.

We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world.
2.

Nothing exists prior to itself.
3.

Therefore nothing is the efficient cause of itself.
4.

If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results.
5.

Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists.
6.

The series of efficient causes cannot extend ad infinitum into the past, for then there would be no things existing now.
7.

Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

The Third Way: Argument from Possibility and Necessity (Reductio argument)

1.

We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, that come into being and go out of being i.e., contingent beings.
2.

Assume that every being is a contingent being.
3.

For each contingent being, there is a time it does not exist.
4.

Therefore it is impossible for these always to exist.
5.

Therefore there could have been a time when no things existed.
6.

Therefore at that time there would have been nothing to bring the currently existing contingent beings into existence.
7.

Therefore, nothing would be in existence now.
8.

We have reached an absurd result from assuming that every being is a contingent being.
9.

Therefore not every being is a contingent being.
10.

Therefore some being exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being, but rather causes them. This all men speak of as God.

The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being

1.

There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others.
2.

Predications of degree require reference to the “uttermost” case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest).
3.

The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus.
4.

Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

The Fifth Way: Argument from Design

1.

We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance.
2.

Most natural things lack knowledge.
3.

But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence achieves goals by being directed by something intelligence.
4. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

 

[ballin4life]

I strongest argument that I know of in support of the existence of a God is the 5 ways by St. Thomas Aquinas.

The First Way: Argument from Motion

1.

Our senses prove that some things are in motion.
2.

Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion.

No idea what potential motion means.

3.

Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion.
4.

False. Gravity.

Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another).
5.

Therefore nothing can move itself.

Except God apparently - self contradictory argument

6.

Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else.
7.

The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum.

Why?

8.

Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

But won't necessarily have any of the other properties that are attributed to God.

The Second Way: Argument from Efficient Causes

1.

We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world.

What is an efficient cause?

2.

Nothing exists prior to itself.
3.

Therefore nothing is the efficient cause of itself.
4.

If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results.
5.

Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists.
6.

The series of efficient causes cannot extend ad infinitum into the past, for then there would be no things existing now.

Why?

7.

Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

But won't necessarily have any of the other properties of God.

The Third Way: Argument from Possibility and Necessity (Reductio argument)

1.

We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, that come into being and go out of being i.e., contingent beings.

What does this even mean? Particularly, what is a "being"? I can argue that we have in fact observed the opposite of this statement - conservation of mass holds for just about everything.

2.

Assume that every being is a contingent being.
3.

For each contingent being, there is a time it does not exist.
4.

Therefore it is impossible for these always to exist.
5.

Therefore there could have been a time when no things existed.

"Could have" is not a sufficient condition for the rest of the argument. I can defeat your argument here by saying that there wasn't actually a time when no things existed, even if all the things are individually contingent.

6.

Therefore at that time there would have been nothing to bring the currently existing contingent beings into existence.
7.

Therefore, nothing would be in existence now.
8.

We have reached an absurd result from assuming that every being is a contingent being.
9.

Therefore not every being is a contingent being.
10.

Therefore some being exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being, but rather causes them. This all men speak of as God.

Ok, so the first 3 arguments are just versions of the first cause argument. Anyway, these don't show that God has any other properties.

The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being

1.

There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others.

Not objectively. I mean, sure I can make a subjective argument that I am better than all things and thus define "God" as me, but what weight does that really have?

2.

Predications of degree require reference to the “uttermost” case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest).

This isn't the case at all. There is no "hottest" thing possible because you can always increase the temperature by one. It's like saying that the ordering of the natural numbers requires reference to some "biggest" natural number - but this isn't the case at all. There is no biggest natural number.

3.

The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus.

Why?

4.

Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

The Fifth Way: Argument from Design

1.

We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance.

How do we see this? What goal? How do we know it isn't by chance?

2.

Most natural things lack knowledge.
3.

But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence achieves goals by being directed by something intelligence.
4. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

4 doesn't follow, since some of the natural things have intelligence themselves.

 

[Dre89]

This is a non-sequitor. The first is derived by Bayes theorem. The second is derived from a poor/lack of understanding of Bayes theorem. For this reason, they are not analogous. If you want to show that they use the same reasoning, then you must use Bayes theorem. If you want your conclusion to be mathematically valid, then you must use Bayes theorem. If you don't care if your conclusion is reliable, then don't bother, but don't expect anyone else to think your argument stands when you use a flawed methodology.

So then are you denying that had fairies, trolls etc. existed, athiests would find the existence of God more probable?

If you are denying that, then I'd be very interested to see how you defend that. If you aren't denying that, then you're conceding that what the athiest observes in the verses affects how probable they deem the existence of God to be. Explain to me how I'm wrong here.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

So then are you denying that had fairies, trolls etc. existed, athiests would find the existence of God more probable?

If you are denying that, then I'd be very interested to see how you defend that. If you aren't denying that, then you're conceding that what the athiest observes in the verses affects how probable they deem the existence of God to be. Explain to me how I'm wrong here.

I will gladly deny that. Quite frankly, if there are fairies, trolls, and the like, observably, then they are no longer supernatural. They are natural. Assuming therefore that the likelihood of any other supernatural being is raised is fallacious And even if they didn't automatically become "natural", then it would still be fallacious.

Also, out of all of the arguments on Savon's post, the only one that points to any kind of god in the sense that theists would present a god (i.e. a non-deistic worldview) is the argument to design, which greatly resembles the incredibly faulty Teleological argument.

 

[ballin4life]

To elaborate, if these "supernatural" beings like fairies and dragons existed we would use the scientific method to try to understand how they work.

It's possible to imagine a universe where there is no gravity, for example. Someone from that world would come to ours and think that gravity works by magic as well. But he could still use the scientific method to determine truths about gravity. The same is true of any other force of magic.

 

[Theftz22]

Dre, I have to manually quote your arguments if you just highlight them into my own post.

I don't understand what your point is. God's omnipotence is what makes it a logical contradiction, but again, my definition of omnipotence does not require the ability to defy the laws of logic. I don't see how the rock comprimises the plausability of Him being able to create being.

Well, that's my point. The contradiction stems from god's ability to lift all rocks and create all rocks, not any inherent contradiction of the rock. This is why I call it a contradiction of omnipotence. Your definition of omnipotence fails because it is contradictory. Even if god cannot do logically contradictory things, he can both create all rocks, and lift all rocks. These are not powers that are of themselves logically contradictory. The contradiction only arises after you accept the omnipotence as you defined it, then there becomes a logical impossibility. Before you define and posit omnipotence, there is no contradiction. After you do, there is. So your definition is contradictory. (Having a lot of trouble trying to say what I mean here.)

Well if space and time were created, then what created them wouldn't exist in a sequence of events, for it wouldn't exist in time. Therefore, the event by event sequence we observe would technically be an illusion.

And yes, all of God's actions (or act) are at once, for they are eternal. It's not as if God is sitting up in eternity looking down at sequential time, waiting for His moment to act, because that would mean God Himself would be in sequential, changing time.

If god brings the universe, and thus time into existence, that is to say that time does not exist at one point, and begins to exist at another. Therefore god is involved in a casual relationship that he was not involved in before. Now god is brought into a temporal relationship. This is for two reasons. One is that a causal relationship is, by nature, sequential, cause preceding effect. And secondly, because god stands in a relationship to time that he was not in before, there has occurred a change, and that brings god into a temporal relationship. Thus he must know this creation action before he executes it.

It doesn't contradict free will, because knowledge of the future only contradicts free will when A can tell B what action he will make in the future. This is contradictory, because A has seen the future, but has the free will to decide whether to tell B what his action will be, for whether he tells him will affect the future, and A did not see both future consequences.

There are two notions of free-will that you could choose from here, however both are problematic for the theist. If you maintain that there is no free-will if a being has a 100% possibility of making a given choice for every situation, then theism does not allow for free-will, because our actions are already known in advance by an infallible source, therefore we will always, with 100% chance, make the decision god knows we will make, thus no free-will. However, if you maintain that free-will still exists so long as the being making the choices is a free agent, regardless of whether or not he is predestined to make a given choice for every situation, then there are also a few problems. Firstly this means that god could create beings that always freely chose good over evil. Because under the given definition of free will, the fact that the being will always choose good does not mean it does not have free will, so long as the being itself does not have prior knowledge guaranteeing its own decision. The other issue is that you'd have to concede your objection to the argument from non-belief, because so long as the person did not already have absolute knowledge of its own decision prior to making it, the person would always freely choose to believe given the necessary evidence.

What makes you think He hasn't given them sufficient evidence? Your example said they would retain the freedom to reject the evidence, so what makes you think this hasn't happened?

You see, the reason you assume God has not provided sufficient evidence is because not everyone has accepted it. But if it is only sufficient evidence if someone accepts it, meaning everyone would accept it, then free will has been comprimised.

Well, like I just said, according to your own definition of free-will, it would not be compromised. The being would always freely choose to accept given the sufficient evidence. Being a free being, it maintains the ability to reject the evidence, it just never does, because that is the amount of evidence needed to persuade it. And this is in accordance with your own definition of free will.

Well this is where it gets tricky. I don't like the eternal creation idea, because they're saying that a contingent existence (creation), is eternal, yet only a necessary existence can be eternal, and only existence could be eternal, yet in this case you have both God and creation.

I don't really have a sufficient answer to this question to be honest. The reason why I retain my thiesm however, is that I feel that athiesm still has the same problem, plus more (I'm only a thiest because I find athiesm to be impossible), and then I have other reasons for believing in God.

Okay, one further question about this eternal creation theory. If the reason god is said to not need an explanation is because he is eternal, why would the universe need an explanation, given that it is also eternal?

It's flawed by your logic because it asserts knowledge of what is prior to the big bang, ie. nothing. It is equally metaphysical.

To draw a bad analogy, imagine that there is a marathon underway. You (as a spectator) rock up to the finish line, having not seen any of the marathon, and see a runner, with no other competitors in sight, cross the finish line. At this point you have no knowledge of what position he finished, so to claim that there were runners who finished prior to him, or to claim he finished first, are equally positive claims, they both earn the same burden of proof. The default position is not that no one finished prior to him, it's that you do not know whether anyone finished prior to him.

I'm not saying that it is impossible to reach any conclusions about the possibility of anything being prior to the big bang. It's an interesting topic and I think we can logically make assertions about it. The assertion that I am making is that there could not be anything prior to the big bang because that was the literal beginning of time and you cannot go sequentially prior to time. My claim was not, we cannot know anything, or make any assertions about what is before the big bang.

But it's still far more flawed than thiesm. If the multi-verse theory is used to explain the fine-tuning, then there would need to be an infnite number of universes, so that there is an infinite number of combinations of constants, so that one ends up producing the universe we have. This then falls to all the logical and mathematical problems infinite regress theory has.

It is not necessarily true that there would have to be an infinite amount of universes, perhaps just a very large amount of them. Given enough universes, the probability of one with constants conducive to life rises and rises, infinity would just guarantee it. So any massive number of universes could be posited to raise the chances to vastly probable, as long as we do not posit infinity, we do not run into the problems of infinite regress.

Even the nature of its assertion is flawed. It's only necessary if you consider it necessary for the explanation to be material, but this is merely assumed. Retaining a material explanation is not necessary, and displays the bias of the athiest. Secondly, it is a flawed claim because it is a material explanation that has no material evidence whatsoever. The fact that you're jumping into metaphysics to make the claim suggests a non-physical explanation is more plausible than a material one that has no material evidence.

My suggestion was that the assertion arises from the need to explain fine-tuning, not that it is a necessary explanation as in, the only possible one.

And I don't see any reason to think that a non-physical explanation should be given preference over a physical explanation in absence of physical evidence, seeing as the non-physical explanation manifests in the physical world too, giving the potential for physical evidence. I think that this reveals a theistic bias, not an atheistic one. If anything, all lack of evidence equal, a physical explanation should be preferred given the undeniable presence of the physical in general, as opposed to the non-physical, the very existence of which is constantly questioned.

My point was not that there is no alternate rational explanation to thiesm, but that you treat thiestic arguments as if they concede that there are alternate rational explanations.

Well, yeah, they won't concede it, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Also, you response avoided the million dollar question. The question is whether these "conditions" that form the universe are subject to the same laws of causation as everything they encompass. Inductively speaking, these conditions do not appear so fundamentally different in composition to contignent existences for us to inductively conclude that they are not contingent.

What? They are completely and totally fundamentally different from the conditions within the universe. There is no space, time, material objects, natural laws, physical forces, etc. If you agree that the big bang represents the coming into being of all these things, then you surely agree that they did not exist prior to it. And it is these things that create the way the universe as we know it works, this includes causation, which I've argued is a temporal relationship between material objects that operates through the physical laws of the universe.

Besides, if you accept that causality applies even in a the state of timelessness before the big bang, you've once again rejected your basis for saying god does not require a cause.

 

[Dre89]

Dre, I have to manually quote your arguments if you just highlight them into my own post.



Well, that's my point. The contradiction stems from god's ability to lift all rocks and create all rocks, not any inherent contradiction of the rock. This is why I call it a contradiction of omnipotence. Your definition of omnipotence fails because it is contradictory. Even if god cannot do logically contradictory things, he can both create all rocks, and lift all rocks. These are not powers that are of themselves logically contradictory. The contradiction only arises after you accept the omnipotence as you defined it, then there becomes a logical impossibility. Before you define and posit omnipotence, there is no contradiction. After you do, there is. So your definition is contradictory. (Having a lot of trouble trying to say what I mean here.)

I think I do understand what you're saying. However, just as you're saying that the contradiction only arises when omnipotence is mentioned, omnipotence would never be forced into the position to have to make that contradicition. Until that situation is forced upon it (which could never happen), the existence of such omnipotence is not impossible.

If god brings the universe, and thus time into existence, that is to say that time does not exist at one point, and begins to exist at another. Therefore god is involved in a casual relationship that he was not involved in before. Now god is brought into a temporal relationship. This is for two reasons. One is that a causal relationship is, by nature, sequential, cause preceding effect. And secondly, because god stands in a relationship to time that he was not in before, there has occurred a change, and that brings god into a temporal relationship. Thus he must know this creation action before he executes it.

Again this where it gets tricky, because thiests will say different things. Some will posit eternal causation, which dodges the bullet you've just fired here.

Secondly, if you're argument here is valid, then it also refutes a material entity causing space and time, so athiesm is on the ropes as well.

There are two notions of free-will that you could choose from here, however both are problematic for the theist. If you maintain that there is no free-will if a being has a 100% possibility of making a given choice for every situation, then theism does not allow for free-will, because our actions are already known in advance by an infallible source, therefore we will always, with 100% chance, make the decision god knows we will make, thus no free-will. However, if you maintain that free-will still exists so long as the being making the choices is a free agent, regardless of whether or not he is predestined to make a given choice for every situation, then there are also a few problems. Firstly this means that god could create beings that always freely chose good over evil. Because under the given definition of free will, the fact that the being will always choose good does not mean it does not have free will, so long as the being itself does not have prior knowledge guaranteeing its own decision. The other issue is that you'd have to concede your objection to the argument from non-belief, because so long as the person did not already have absolute knowledge of its own decision prior to making it, the person would always freely choose to believe given the necessary evidence.

The second notion of free will isn't free will though. You argue that we would all be able to always choose good over evil, but it would be free will as long as we are not aware that we will always choose good, but not knowing our future decisions does not equate to free will. We may well be determined, but that doesn't change the fact that we feel we are free, and that we don't know our future decisions.

Well, like I just said, according to your own definition of free-will, it would not be compromised. The being would always freely choose to accept given the sufficient evidence. Being a free being, it maintains the ability to reject the evidence, it just never does, because that is the amount of evidence needed to persuade it. And this is in accordance with your own definition of free will.

No it isn't. The problem is that in the case where someone rejects it, you will argue that there wasn't sufficient evidence. In your scenario it's not a free choice, because once provided sufficient evidence there is no alternative but to accept it, and everyone would be provided sufficient evidence.

Free will entails the ability to reject sufficient evidence. Your scenario is not free will, it's just having certain threshholds before one is forced into a specific thought/action. The equivalent would be a creature whos willpower in terms of resisting sexual temptation has a specific threshold, and once the temptation has breached this threashhold, the creature can no longer control himself and is forced into giving in to the temptation. That is not free will, despite the fact it may appear to a conscious decision to the creature.

Okay, one further question about this eternal creation theory. If the reason god is said to not need an explanation is because he is eternal, why would the universe need an explanation, given that it is also eternal?

Well the explanation would be that it is created, but then that seems to contradict its eternity. As I said before, this is muddy water, and this aspect of it is tying my brian in knots.

However, athiesm still has the same issues, plus even more.

I'm not saying that it is impossible to reach any conclusions about the possibility of anything being prior to the big bang. It's an interesting topic and I think we can logically make assertions about it. The assertion that I am making is that there could not be anything prior to the big bang because that was the literal beginning of time and you cannot go sequentially prior to time. My claim was not, we cannot know anything, or make any assertions about what is before the big bang.

Well then the point is a stalemate because thiests aren't going sequentially prior to the BB.

It is not necessarily true that there would have to be an infinite amount of universes, perhaps just a very large amount of them. Given enough universes, the probability of one with constants conducive to life rises and rises, infinity would just guarantee it. So any massive number of universes could be posited to raise the chances to vastly probable, as long as we do not posit infinity, we do not run into the problems of infinite regress.

But then you still haven't solved the problem. What caused the multiple unvierses still leaves us asking the same questions we ask about this universe, what caused it etc.

And even if it does solve the problem of fine-tuning, it's just one hypothesis amongst many that has no more validity than any of the others. There is no evidence for it, it's just an anttempt to explain the fine-tuning whilst retaining a material cause.

My suggestion was that the assertion arises from the need to explain fine-tuning, not that it is a necessary explanation as in, the only possible one.

But in the long run this does nothing to thiesm, because then the thiest can argue that whatever created the multiple universes still necessitates a diety.

And I don't see any reason to think that a non-physical explanation should be given preference over a physical explanation in absence of physical evidence, seeing as the non-physical explanation manifests in the physical world too, giving the potential for physical evidence. I think that this reveals a theistic bias, not an atheistic one. If anything, all lack of evidence equal, a physical explanation should be preferred given the undeniable presence of the physical in general, as opposed to the non-physical, the very existence of which is constantly questioned.

But there is no physical explanation. The physical explanation only accommodates the fine-tuning, it still hasn't provided a material entity as the first cause. Secondly, I'm not positing a non-physical cause simply because there is no evidence of a physical cause, I'm deductively asserting that a material entity does not possess the necessary properties to be the first cause.

Well, yeah, they won't concede it, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.



What? They are completely and totally fundamentally different from the conditions within the universe. There is no space, time, material objects, natural laws, physical forces, etc. If you agree that the big bang represents the coming into being of all these things, then you surely agree that they did not exist prior to it. And it is these things that create the way the universe as we know it works, this includes causation, which I've argued is a temporal relationship between material objects that operates through the physical laws of the universe.

Besides, if you accept that causality applies even in a the state of timelessness before the big bang, you've once again rejected your basis for saying god does not require a cause.

Things that are the foundation of the universe, such as time, space, energy, motion etc. are all finite that necessitate a prior cause. You concede this, and assert that the BB is what caused them. But what makes the singularity any different to these principles? It is still a natural entity with a specific form, just like the contingent principles such as space, time etc. So what makes the singularity of all things not necessitate a cause?

If the singularity does not require a cause, then niether would time, space etc. then what you end up with is multiple self-necessray principles, which not only is logically implausible (particularly on inductive experience which athiests prize), but it invalidates the singularity as a necessity at all.

And I didn't say there was a time before the BB, that's what athiests say. Athiests say a material entity somehow caused space and time, yet matieral entities can only exist within space and time.

 

[Dre89]

To elaborate, if these "supernatural" beings like fairies and dragons existed we would use the scientific method to try to understand how they work.

They would still be supernatural if they had supernatural powers. These are powers not based on phsyical energy and the manipulation of cells, it'd be power similar to that which Jesus would have commanded, that which is not accesible by the scientific method.

 

[Reaver197]

Just out curiosity, wouldn't the very fact that these supernatural powers affects "physical" energy (there's non-physical energy?), matter, and cells place those powers in a realm that is patently natural and, thus, accessible by science?

 

[Dre89]

Well let's look at miracles.

A miracle is not accessible by science, you wouldn't be able to scientifically analyse Jesus' powers.

I thought that was the whole point of magic.

 

[ballin4life]

They would still be supernatural if they had supernatural powers. These are powers not based on phsyical energy and the manipulation of cells, it'd be power similar to that which Jesus would have commanded, that which is not accesible by the scientific method.

Did you read the very next point in my post? Someone could consider gravity to be magic too (in fact people did - there was a big philosophical controversy about gravity because it constituted action at a distance).

But regardless of the fact that gravity is magical, we still get some idea that IT'S THERE. It's a law of the universe.

If dragons and fairies existed we would try to figure out how they work along those same lines. We might eventually say that magic is a law of the universe as well.

Well let's look at miracles.

A miracle is not accessible by science, you wouldn't be able to scientifically analyse Jesus' powers.

I thought that was the whole point of magic.

Of course you can scientifically analyze miracles. They just won't fit in with OUR CURRENT PARADIGM. But that's how science works - we shift our paradigm once we see new evidence.

Magic is only "magic relative to our point of view". As I said, someone from another universe might consider gravity to be magic. For another example, if I brought a laptop computer back to the Middle Ages, they would probably consider that magic too. But we can figure out how it works eventually.

If "magic" existed, we would try to figure out how it works just like we have tried to figure out how gravity works. We might have to add additional physical laws to our model of the universe, but that's exactly what we did with gravity.

 

[Seikend]

Yes. And the existence of impossible tasks makes omnipotence logically contradictory. Remember, you're asking for unlimited power-the ability to do anything, be anything, know anything. The fact that it's logically impossible to perform certain acts or become certain things means that omnipotence, the ability to do anything or become anything, infinite power, is logically impossible.



There's not really a difference.

I'd like to come back to this, I feel my first response was really weak and I'd like to apologise.

You make the assumption that omnipotence is the ability to do anything etc.

However, omnipotence can be taken as the ability to do anything within the constraints of logic. This definition allows God to not be contradictory, whilst still being a characteristic of God, and unobtainable by anything else.

With this, your issue is purely linguistics. If this characteristic of god was called "qwert", your issue would no longer stand, as you are relying on your definition of omnipotence.

With the definition of omnipotence I have provided, would you still find an issue with it?

I hope this answer is more satisfactory to you.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Makes sense to me @Seikend.

 

[ballin4life]

I'd like to come back to this, I feel my first response was really weak and I'd like to apologise.

You make the assumption that omnipotence is the ability to do anything etc.

However, omnipotence can be taken as the ability to do anything within the constraints of logic. This definition allows God to not be contradictory, whilst still being a characteristic of God, and unobtainable by anything else.

With this, your issue is purely linguistics. If this characteristic of god was called "qwert", your issue would no longer stand, as you are relying on your definition of omnipotence.

With the definition of omnipotence I have provided, would you still find an issue with it?

I hope this answer is more satisfactory to you.

Actually, "within the constraints of logic" doesn't solve the omnipotence paradox at all. It just means that God can't make a square circle or anything like that.

You have to go with something along the lines of "God can do anything that doesn't limit his own power".

Anyway can we please stop talking about the omnipotence paradox at least someone explains why God, the first cause, has to be omnipotent in the first place? (not to mention have a will, etc). I could build a car, but that doesn't mean I have absolute power over the inner workings of the car as well.

 

[Dre89]

He would need to be omnipotent, as well as other things, because if He wasn't, He would be a being with a specific form.

Also, the powers He would have would be contingent, making the first cause contingent, when the first cause must be necessary.

 

[ballin4life]

What's wrong with the first cause being contingent (appearing and then going away)?

Technically, 100% of "causes" appear and then go away in this fashion (in the sense that one billiard ball hits another, and that brief instant is the cause of the next one moving). I guess what I am asking here is why the first cause has to be a being.


Also I don't see how the first cause not being omnipotent gives it a specific form, but being omnipotent does not give it a form

 

[Reaver197]

Well let's look at miracles.

A miracle is not accessible by science, you wouldn't be able to scientifically analyse Jesus' powers.

I thought that was the whole point of magic.

That doesn't really answer my question...

The point of it was the fact that these supernatural phenomena, whether it be specifically be Jesus' ostensibly miracles or magic, affects things in the natural world, things that are made of matter and energy. Therefore, there is some naturalistic mechanism that this supposedly "supernatural" phenomena exerts or uses to affect. This leaves it open to being studied and understood in what manner and how this "supernatural" force operates on matter.

So, it seems to me that to claim something as "supernatural" or "magical" is really just an appeal from ignorance because we don't understand how this phenomena or force is affecting natural bodies or forces. If you also want to maintain something as "supernatural", then you're forced into this awkward position of having to explain and/or determine how and at what point "supernatural" force or power changes into a natural one that actually affects the natural world.



About the argument of omnipotence, while I think the logical paradox of it holds water, it's also effective to demonstrate the utter failings of this ostensibly omnipotent being to exhibit any sort of actual intelligence in the design of the things it has ostensibly made.

It's also an argument that can never be proved, so it's almost pointless to say it. You can never demonstrate omnipotence, so to assume that a being has omnipotence is just wishful thinking.

 

[Dre89]

We're just not assuming omnipotence for the sake of it, we're saying it's a necessary attribute of the first cause.

Ballin- I wouldn't call the first cause a being (although certain thiests do), because then you're prescribing a trait of the first cause to what it creates, but if that triat could exist self-necessarily, then beings themselves would be self-necessray, but inductive experience tells us they're not.

This is one reason why the FC can't be contingent, because it can't have traits that finite beings have. The second, and more important reason, is that contingency always necessitates a prior cause.

For example, let's momentarily assume the FC is contingent, let's go with the classic FSM. Now the FSM would be eternal, because it's the self-necessary FC, so nothing caused. So the question is of all the things it could have been, why this specific combination of principles (the assembly, of space, time, motion energy, as the FSM necessitates these existences, as well as the specifc matter of spaghetti, it's specific shape etc.)?

If we are assuming the FC could be contingent, there is an infinite range of possibilities of what it could have been. But when we ask why it is this specific combination, there are only two necessary answers- necessity and randomness.

Both answers are flawed. If we say the FC had to be X to actuate Y, then the FC is no longer self-necessary, for it has a specifc purpose that was prescribed to it prior to its existence, or simultaneous to its existence. There is a principle that it does not encompass. Of course, that which is eternal and self-necessary cannot have anything before or independent of it, because then it would not be self-necessary, for it would be dependant on that principle (for example in this case, the nature of the FC is dependant on what it's necessary objective is, which is the other principle, meaning the FC is not self-necessary).

The other option is randomness. Of an infinite set of possibilities, one set occured by random. The problem is that is a sequential process- the infinite possiblities being there, then one set being selected, but of course that can't happen in eternity, an eternal existence can't change.

This is why the FC I posit is self-necessary, and simple, having no arbitrary attribute. Every attribute I ascribe to it, including things such as a will, is out of necessity.

 

[Theftz22]

I think I do understand what you're saying. However, just as you're saying that the contradiction only arises when omnipotence is mentioned, omnipotence would never be forced into the position to have to make that contradicition. Until that situation is forced upon it (which could never happen), the existence of such omnipotence is not impossible.

I think you're simply mistaking what exactly the contradiction is. It is not, "will god create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it", it is "can god create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it". It's not as if god is lurking around hoping that no one will ask him to create such a rock, then POOF! disappearing when the task is put before him. That's absurd. It's the very existence of such a contradiction that makes his own existence impossible.

Again this where it gets tricky, because thiests will say different things. Some will posit eternal causation, which dodges the bullet you've just fired here.

I don't think it's fair of you to use eternal causation if you are not willing or able to defend it.

Secondly, if you're argument here is valid, then it also refutes a material entity causing space and time, so athiesm is on the ropes as well.

Well not my atheism anyway. I've never argued for a material cause for the universe. I've suggested several mechanisms for either causing the universe or showing that it does not necessitate a cause, such as the impossibility of "before time", the lack of causality before the universe, B-theory time, or the mechanism suggested in the lecture A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.

But still, I reject your initial premise anyway, that my argument refutes a material cause for the universe. My argument was only based off refuting a cause of the universe that has the properties of omniscience and omnipotence ascribed to it, and a material cause would not necessarily have to have those properties. Indeed, I think it most usually would not.

The second notion of free will isn't free will though. You argue that we would all be able to always choose good over evil, but it would be free will as long as we are not aware that we will always choose good, but not knowing our future decisions does not equate to free will. We may well be determined, but that doesn't change the fact that we feel we are free, and that we don't know our future decisions.

Well that clearly depends on what you mean by determined. I don't see any inherent contradiction to saying that god could create creatures that always freely choose the good. That is to say that they maintain the ability to choose evil, but simply never do.

And besides, as I've argued, when adopting the first notion of free will, the theist forfeits free will in his own worldview.

No it isn't. The problem is that in the case where someone rejects it, you will argue that there wasn't sufficient evidence. In your scenario it's not a free choice, because once provided sufficient evidence there is no alternative but to accept it, and everyone would be provided sufficient evidence.

Free will entails the ability to reject sufficient evidence. Your scenario is not free will, it's just having certain threshholds before one is forced into a specific thought/action. The equivalent would be a creature whos willpower in terms of resisting sexual temptation has a specific threshold, and once the temptation has breached this threashhold, the creature can no longer control himself and is forced into giving in to the temptation. That is not free will, despite the fact it may appear to a conscious decision to the creature.

I maintain that there is the alternative to accepting the evidence, that is obviously rejecting it. This alternative still exists, it is just never exercised. The person will always freely choose to accept. The option always exists, it is just never chosen. I see no contradiction.

And under the definition of free will you seem to be adopting, this free will defense fails because there is no free will from the theistic perspective. The atheist could argue successfully from both sides, the theist will fail arguing from either.

Well then the point is a stalemate because thiests aren't going sequentially prior to the BB.

Well if you maintain that god causes the universe to exist, then I would say that you are indeed necessitating going prior to the big bang. The only way I could see you getting around this is once again with the whole "eternal causation" thing. But you again seem to either unable or unwilling to defend that, so I don't think you can in honesty use that.

But then you still haven't solved the problem. What caused the multiple unvierses still leaves us asking the same questions we ask about this universe, what caused it etc.

Again, the multiverse is not an origins hypothesis, it's a hypothesis in regards to explaining the fine tuning. The origin of the multiverse would have to be further explained, but that does nothing to discredit it, just as the big bang model does not contain, in itself, an explanation of its origin. That would be like faulting evolutionary theory for not explaining abiogenesis.

And even if it does solve the problem of fine-tuning, it's just one hypothesis amongst many that has no more validity than any of the others. There is no evidence for it, it's just an anttempt to explain the fine-tuning whilst retaining a material cause.

And that's all that I was offering it as. Just an alternative. In my original post "The multiverse theory. This is the theory that our universe is just one of many, each with different fundamental constants. It's pure speculation at this point, but that puts it on even ground with the god hypothesis for the fine tuning of the universe." That's all I tauted it as.

But in the long run this does nothing to thiesm, because then the thiest can argue that whatever created the multiple universes still necessitates a diety.

Again, the multiverse in no way addresses any first cause argument. In the presence of only the multiverse objection, the theist is free to make that argument. It would require further argument by the atheist to address that argument. The multiverse only touches the fine tuning argument.

But there is no physical explanation. The physical explanation only accommodates the fine-tuning, it still hasn't provided a material entity as the first cause. Secondly, I'm not positing a non-physical cause simply because there is no evidence of a physical cause, I'm deductively asserting that a material entity does not possess the necessary properties to be the first cause.

Once again you mistake the multiverse hypothesis for an origins theory which it simply is not. And secondly, you did say that in absence of physical evidence we should prefer a non-physical exlanation which is what I was addressing.

Things that are the foundation of the universe, such as time, space, energy, motion etc. are all finite that necessitate a prior cause. You concede this, and assert that the BB is what caused them. But what makes the singularity any different to these principles? It is still a natural entity with a specific form, just like the contingent principles such as space, time etc. So what makes the singularity of all things not necessitate a cause?

Well all of the laws and properties of the universe that you've mentioned are emergent properties within the universe, contingent on the big bang. The big bang is in an entirely different category as it is the literal becoming of these things that create causality and the universe as a whole. That of which is true of things within the universe are not necessarily true of the universe as a whole. The big bang, if we could even speak of before it, would have came into existence from a state of timelessness, spacelessness, immateriality, and devoid of any governing laws. Hence I would never attribute it the same properties as anything within the universe, such as causality, just as you would not of god.

If the singularity does not require a cause, then niether would time, space etc. then what you end up with is multiple self-necessray principles, which not only is logically implausible (particularly on inductive experience which athiests prize), but it invalidates the singularity as a necessity at all.

Well time and space are created by the big bang, so they are contingent upon it, so their cause is the big bang, but the big bang itself does not require a cause. And I don't see why you say multiple self-necessary entities are implausible.

And I didn't say there was a time before the BB, that's what athiests say. Athiests say a material entity somehow caused space and time, yet matieral entities can only exist within space and time.

As I've argued, saying that god created the universe would necessitate him existing prior to it, thus establishing a necessity for a time before the big bang. And I have never asserted a material cause for the universe.

 

[Dre89]

I have to be quick so I can't cover everything, but I'll try my best.

There's no difference between people having the ability to choose evil, and always choosing good because God intends it, and just always choosing good because God intends it.

You contradict yourself with the singularity. You criticise thiesm for going prior to time and space, but then when I say time and space being self-necessary renders the singularity pointless, you say it caused time and space, meaning it is prior to time.

The multiverse theory is just a stall. I know it only accommodates fine tuning, which is why it's pointless. Positing a MV commits one to athiesm, because a thiest wouldn't need a MV to explain fine tuning. So positing a MV is just an athiest without a sufficient explanation stalling, because a MV is just trying to explain FT until you find an explanation of the universe, despite the fact an MV is an equally metaphysical assertion as thiesm. The difference is thiests have a reason to assert FT, for they have an explanation of the universe.

 

[ballin4life]

I have to be quick so I can't cover everything, but I'll try my best.

There's no difference between people having the ability to choose evil, and always choosing good because God intends it, and just always choosing good because God intends it.

There is a HUGE difference. Seriously, this is the biggest contradiction that I have ever seen. Is it not possible to have the POWER to do something, but not do it of your own free will? By your argument, can't I say that God is NOT OMNIPOTENT, since he never decided to make the sky purple? Since God never makes this choice, clearly God does not have the free will to do so, and thus is not omnipotent.

Now, I don't think omnipotence is necessary for God at all, but this a huge contradiction in your argument. My point is that it is perfectly possible to have the POWER to do something but never choose to actually do it.

The multiverse theory is just a stall. I know it only accommodates fine tuning, which is why it's pointless. Positing a MV commits one to athiesm, because a thiest wouldn't need a MV to explain fine tuning. So positing a MV is just an athiest without a sufficient explanation stalling, because a MV is just trying to explain FT until you find an explanation of the universe, despite the fact an MV is an equally metaphysical assertion as thiesm. The difference is thiests have a reason to assert FT, for they have an explanation of the universe.

Multiverse is a terrible argument, but the real reason that the Fine-Tuning argument doesn't make sense is that you have no basis to make claims about the probability of the universe turning out a certain way. It's like saying "What is the probability that Mount Everest exists?" Without a Probability Space defined the question makes no sense.

 

[Dre89]

The free will thing is not a contradiction. Dogs is saying that we could have free will, yet choose good in every instance.

And I'm not saying a person has to act out every possibility to have free will, they need to be able to do so, not always be confined to acting out a select view.

As for the MV, thiesm has a reason for the FT argument because it argues the first cause must be God, so FT is the explanation.

Even if the first cause is physical, that doesn't mean that MV necessarily follows, so there's no grounds at all to assert MV.

 

[ballin4life]

The free will thing is not a contradiction. Dogs is saying that we could have free will, yet choose good in every instance.

Yes, and this is completely possible.

Not only is it possible, but you claim that there is a being (God) with free will that does it!

And I'm not saying a person has to act out every possibility to have free will, they need to be able to do so, not always be confined to acting out a select view.

Yes, but all that matters is that you are ABLE to do evil things. You might always choose good, but as long as you have the ABILITY, the POWER, to do evil, you still have free will.

As for the MV, thiesm has a reason for the FT argument because it argues the first cause must be God, so FT is the explanation.

Even if the first cause is physical, that doesn't mean that MV necessarily follows, so there's no grounds at all to assert MV.

I'm really unsure whether you read my post or are just repeating yourself. I specifically said that MULTIVERSE IS A TERRIBLE ARGUMENT and advanced a completely different one.

 

[Sucumbio]

First a dumbed down version of Aquinas' 5 Proofs -source

1 - FIRST MOVER: Some things are in motion, anything moved is moved by another [thing], and there can't be an infinite series of movers. So there must be a first mover (a mover that isn't itself moved by another). This is God.

2 - FIRST CAUSE: Some things are caused, anything caused is caused by another, and there can't be an infinite series of causes. So there must be a first cause (a cause that isn't itself caused by another). This is God.

3 - NECESSARY BEING: Every contingent being at some time fails to exist. So if everything were contingent, then at some time there would have been nothing -- and so there would be nothing now -- which is clearly false. So not everything is contingent. So there is a necessary being. This is God.

4 - GREATEST BEING: Some things are greater than others. Whatever is great to any degree gets its greatness from that which is the greatest. So there is a greatest being, which is the source of all greatness. This is God.

5 - INTELLIGENT DESIGNER: Many things in the world that lack intelligence act for an end. Whatever acts for an end must be directed by an intelligent being. So the world must have an intelligent designer. This is God.

No idea what potential motion means.

The ability to be moved. Any object essentially including living and non-living things, from the largest meteors to the smallest atoms and even sub-atomic particles.

False. Gravity.

I don't think this is what Aquinas meant. He's saying that anything moving had to have been acted upon by something to make it move in the first place, so this includes the observation of gravity, which is in essence magnetism. In your example that Humans move by themselves all the time, technically it's our thoughts that lead us to physical motion, and our thoughts come from our brains. The first cause lead to us having brains, so all motion in humans (or any other biological form) still requires the first "thought" which is God. That's not to say that God makes us move. Think of it like ... we're destined to move, because God made it possible. Which means when I raise my right arm right now.... ... .... that motion was caused by God only so much in that God created the first thought which led to me thinking to move my arm in that instant.

Your point that the first 3 proofs are correlative isn't exactly inaccurate; they are in that they logically demand a first being which for all intents and purposes can be nothing other than God. The 4th proof is a lofty exaggeration of the same principle established in 1-3, so it's still really the same thing.

The only one that stands to fall flat is 5, which assumes that because animals lack human intelligence, that they must have been designed by something greater than them (which correlates to the rest, and especially 4, but makes a much larger assumption). My problem with this proof is the statement: "Whatever acts for an end must be directed by an intelligent being." True... milking a cow is a means to an end, and an end itself. The cow is milked for us to drink it, and the milking of the cow produces said milk. But there are other examples in nature where humans have no interaction and yet they still proceed towards ends. Mating, for example, which can be forced by humans in the form of breeding, will take place even if humans are not involved. This means that not everything requires a more intelligent source to produce an end. And since humans are theoretically "lower" on the intelligence scale than God, it stands to reason that animals would require humans to meet ALL ends, not just the ones that humans -choose- to involve themselves in. Otherwise God would be taking the place of humans in the ends that humans don't participate in, which puts God on a level field with Humans (we milk the cows, but God makes the birds have sex), which contradicts our working definition of God.

 

[ballin4life]

The ability to be moved. Any object essentially including living and non-living things, from the largest meteors to the smallest atoms and even sub-atomic particles.

I still have no idea what this means. Maybe try defining "motion" first, and remember that motion is completely relative to a chosen frame of reference.

For example, let's say I roll a bowling ball from one end of the room to the other, a distance of 10 feet. You might say the actual motion of my arm moved the ball. But this assumes an absolute frame of reference. I can just as well say that the ball did not move at all, but the rest of the world moved 10 feet. What "actual motion" caused the world to move?

I don't think this is what Aquinas meant. He's saying that anything moving had to have been acted upon by something to make it move in the first place, so this includes the observation of gravity, which is in essence magnetism.

Ok, first off please tell me that you don't think gravity is the same as magnetism. I think you just misspoke here.

Here's an example of what I am saying: If I throw a ball straight up in the air, at the apex of the ball's trajectory it is not moving (has speed equal to 0). Then it starts to move downward, without any "actual motion" acting on it.

In your example that Humans move by themselves all the time, technically it's our thoughts that lead us to physical motion, and our thoughts come from our brains.

I don't accept the proposition that thoughts are directly caused by our brains. I think brains are necessary for thought, but I don't think they 100% cause it. It's like saying that the pool table caused two billiard balls to hit each other. Sure, the table was necessary for it to happen, but intuitively it doesn't seem like the "cause" (as opposed to the human hitting the first billiard ball into the second).

This is a general problem with these arguments, since no one EVER seems to define what a "cause" actually is. Is it the cue stick, or the table?

The first cause lead to us having brains, so all motion in humans (or any other biological form) still requires the first "thought" which is God.

You are assuming your conclusion here. You have to show that "the first cause led to us having brains".

That's not to say that God makes us move. Think of it like ... we're destined to move, because God made it possible. Which means when I raise my right arm right now.... ... .... that motion was caused by God only so much in that God created the first thought which led to me thinking to move my arm in that instant.

So God is like the billiard table?

Again, you seem to be assuming your conclusion. I can just say that the universe "causes" this motion in the same way.

Your point that the first 3 proofs are correlative isn't exactly inaccurate; they are in that they logically demand a first being which for all intents and purposes can be nothing other than God. The 4th proof is a lofty exaggeration of the same principle established in 1-3, so it's still really the same thing.

Uh, half the argument that I made was that you HAVEN'T shown that the first being is God at all. You can define that first being to be God, sure, but that doesn't mean that that you can assign ANY other properties to it (like a will, omniscience, omnipotence, goodness, etc).

Not to mention that I don't think you have even shown this first cause to be a being at all.

 

[Sucumbio]

I still have no idea what this means. Maybe try defining "motion" first, and remember that motion is completely relative to a chosen frame of reference.

For example, let's say I roll a bowling ball from one end of the room to the other, a distance of 10 feet. You might say the actual motion of my arm moved the ball. But this assumes an absolute frame of reference. I can just as well say that the ball did not move at all, but the rest of the world moved 10 feet. What "actual motion" caused the world to move?

Aquinas is not really trying to be complex in this. To use the ball analogy, the ball can be moved, or it can be at rest, ergo: Potential Energy or Kinetic Energy. Now it's true that you could say the ball isn't moving at all and it's the world that is, but that's not accurate... if everything is stationary except the ball once it's left your hand, then it's the ball that's moving.

We can actually correlate Aquinas' idea of potentiality to Newton's Law:

Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

It has been assumed that the same is true for objects at rest (in that they tend to stay at rest unless acted on by an external force).

Why Newton's first law is true, is the same as why Aquinas' first Proof is true. Objects have a potentiality to move, they simply require something to make them move. Nothing just moves by itself.

Ok, first off please tell me that you don't think gravity is the same as magnetism. I think you just misspoke here.

Perhaps...

gravity: the force of attraction by which terrestrial bodies tend to fall toward the center of the earth.

I get why you'd point this out, and I'll further this distinction by referring to general relativity.

Spoiler

The world we live in consists of four dimensions, the three space dimensions and one that is not exactly time but is related to time (it is in fact time multiplied by the square root of -1). This is not at all easy to understand but it means that space-time as we call it has some rather weird properties. In particular, when you move through one of the space dimensions you also travel, unwittingly, through time. You do not notice this, indeed as far as you are concerned nothing happens to you at all, but someone observing you would say that you have travelled through time. Of course, we are always travelling through time, but when you travel through space you travel through time by less that you expect. The most famous example of this effect is the "Twins Paradox".

All the effects of special relativity, such as the slowing down of clocks and the shrinking of rods follow from the above. In fact, it is often better to think of some things, such as electromagnetic fields as being four-dimensional objects. However, the important thing to remember for the moment, is: when you move through space you are compelled to move through time but, when you move through time (which of course you are always doing) you do not have to move through space.

So, what does this have to do with gravity? It is quite simple! When a mass is present in the above space-time it distorts it so that whilst it remains true that travelling through space causes you to travel through time, travelling through time now causes you to move (accelerate) through space. In other words just by existing, you are compelled to move through space - this is gravity.

The particular advantage of this theory of gravity (General Relativity) is that it explains, at a stroke, all the observed properties of gravity. For example the fact that it acts equally on all objects and substances becomes obvious when you thing of gravity as a distortion of space-time rather than a force.

Imagine that you are in free space, away from any planets or stars, when suddenly a planet is created quite close to you. You would not be aware that anything is happening to you, you would feel no force, but you would find that you started to accelerate towards the planet. This is just like the case where you travel through space, you are not aware that you have also travelled through time but people observing you are.

Here's an example of what I am saying: If I throw a ball straight up in the air, at the apex of the ball's trajectory it is not moving (has speed equal to 0). Then it starts to move downward, without any "actual motion" acting on it.

As is evidenced by general relativity, the ball simply existing means it's compelled to move through space. Aquinas wasn't even trying to get that in depth though. Using his proof, we'd simply say that the act of throwing it up in the first place, is why it also comes down. The single instant in which it is not "moving" (it is still in motion, it's just perceived by any third persons as standing still) is explained in that potential motion changed from upwards potential to downward potential.

I don't accept the proposition that thoughts are directly caused by our brains. I think brains are necessary for thought, but I don't think they 100% cause it. It's like saying that the pool table caused two billiard balls to hit each other. Sure, the table was necessary for it to happen, but intuitively it doesn't seem like the "cause" (as opposed to the human hitting the first billiard ball into the second).

Synapses function in your analogy as to the pool table, neurons as the balls, or cue.... The brain is a complex organ, of course, but where a thought actually originates is still debatable. A single thought would need a brain to come to fruition, yes but it's no single element of the brain. The cause of a thought is the culmination of multiple parts of a single organ. When you strike a billiard ball with your cue, and they are both on a table, and one is aimed at the other, they collide. When you fire a neuron along your brain's synapse, a thought occurs. Notice in both the operative "you" is doing something. This is cause.

You are assuming your conclusion here. You have to show that "the first cause led to us having brains".

This is implied. Evolution led to the actual brain, but evolution itself is the observation of causes to effects, going back to the first cause.

So God is like the billiard table?

Again, you seem to be assuming your conclusion. I can just say that the universe "causes" this motion in the same way.

Well sure, you can attribute motion to the universe as well, but you're still identifying a cause and effect. Aquinas' point was that all effects have prior causes, going back ad infinitum to the first cause, which is God.

Uh, half the argument that I made was that you HAVEN'T shown that the first being is God at all. You can define that first being to be God, sure, but that doesn't mean that that you can assign ANY other properties to it (like a will, omniscience, omnipotence, goodness, etc).

Absolutely true, there's nothing that proves that God is anything other than the first cause. In fact most evidence would suggest otherwise, that God aka The First Cause is an irresponsible jerk, lol.

Not to mention that I don't think you have even shown this first cause to be a being at all.

Well this stems from Proof 4, which although a more lofty extension of 1-3; it's the same principle. Things are moving so there had to be something to make the first thing move. Things happen so there had to be something to make the first happening happen. Things exist but not forever, so something had to exist first in order for things to exist now. Things are great, and their greatness extends from higher greatnesses, so something had to be the greatest of all things.

This part is lofty because it's referring to consciousness. Our consciousness had to have come from a greater consciousness, in other words. Is it necessarily alive? Well there's no telling. We being "lower" creatures, perhaps our being alive is actually a lesser state. The greatest greatness could very well be a computer! But I doubt it. The preceding proofs tend to suggest that it's nothing mechanical or even biological, and this is where God's other attributes stem from (the omni's).

 

[Savon]

1 - FIRST MOVER: Some things are in motion, anything moved is moved by another [thing], and there can't be an infinite series of movers. So there must be a first mover (a mover that isn't itself moved by another). This is God.

Logically this point makes sense, but the biggest issue I have with this proof is that it assumes that there cannot be an infinite series of movers and that if there IS a first mover it has to be God. There is no evidence suggesting that we do not have an infinite series of events that cannot be truly measured. This point tries to force God as being the answer when there is little evidence to suggest otherwise.

2 - FIRST CAUSE: Some things are caused, anything caused is caused by another, and there can't be an infinite series of causes. So there must be a first cause (a cause that isn't itself caused by another). This is God.

Basically the same logic I applied to the first. It jumps the gun and immediately makes the assumption that because there "must" be a first cause it has to be God. (Although I still do not accept the idea of infinities not being able to occur.


3 - NECESSARY BEING: Every contingent being at some time fails to exist. So if everything were contingent, then at some time there would have been nothing -- and so there would be nothing now -- which is clearly false. So not everything is contingent. So there is a necessary being. This is God.

Logical, but once again makes the assumption that because not everything is contingent God exists.

4 - GREATEST BEING: Some things are greater than others. Whatever is great to any degree gets its greatness from that which is the greatest. So there is a greatest being, which is the source of all greatness. This is God.


Couldn't you have something even greater though? There is always room for greatness. In a sense greatness can be considered infinite because there is always a higher level to reach when it comes be being great. More importantly, why does god instantly receive this "greatness" status assuming that there is a cap for greatness.


5 - INTELLIGENT DESIGNER: Many things in the world that lack intelligence act for an end. Whatever acts for an end must be directed by an intelligent being. So the world must have an intelligent designer. This is God.

I think somebody else already explained why this was incorrect.


The first 3 proofs make logical sense for the most part, but the problem is that the end conclusion is not immediately supported by the statements being made.

The biggest thing I dislike about theological debates such as this is that it all ultimately comes down to this "blank" area where neither side has any proof to back up their claims. Debates about the existence of god always go into this region of debate where nothing can be logically or backed up by evidence by either party.

I prefer to remain an agnostic that is more skeptical of the existence of a god than it actually existing for those very reasons.

In reference to the background of the person who wrote the proofs however, these proofs do little to support the flaws people point out with the god worshiped by Christians.

Edit: New evidence

http://vorpal.us/2007/10/the-five-ways-of-st-thomas-aquinas-are-all-dead-ends/