Does the first cause theory depend on special pleading?

[achilles12604]

No less than 3 (cog,goat and duke) non -theists have accused me of using a logical fallacy of special pleading with regard to my idea of the first cause theory.

HISTORY:

From The God Hypothesis

Concerning this topic I put forth the following:

If the universe did begin, it must have had a cause. Nothing comes from nothing. If nothing happened or existed, then nothing would be the result. Obviously something happened because we are here. So something changed. Changes require causes.

This cause had to have certain requirements.

1) It must have been space less or at the very least outside of the confines of this universe.

2) It must have been timeless. Time it is shown by Einstein and others after him directly interacts with matter and space inside this universe. It is a factor which exists inside this universe. If there was no universe then there would be nothing to interact with. Hence the cause of the universe must be timeless.

I followed this with :

First you need to define a person. Then define the start of the person.

then you can identify the cause of that start. What you have done is list a series of results of different causes. But each of these steps had a cause which allowed it to be so. Likewise each of these steps would not have occurred except that something took place. Without that something, the step would not have occurred.

Lets say (because I am personally against abortion) that a person exists after conception. Before conception it is not a person but rather two sets of genes.

The genes come together and combine DNA which begins the growth process.

Strictly speaking the combining of the DNA is what caused the person to exist.

Quote:
Why must the existence of the universe have a cause? I'm not particularly well versed on universe theory, but I am aware that there is a line of thought whereby this universe is one in a long line of universes that expand, collapse, expand, collapse. Do they need a cause?


I am familiar with this theory. It is no longer accepted by scientists in every secular area of society (not to mention Christian).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_theory

Each step has a cause all the way back to the formation of the universe. So we are back at the "first cause".

I am making one assumption. That the universe did have a cause. However I am making this assumption based on 100% of the observable data ever collected or witnessed by mankind since our existence. There has never been an occurrence which did not have a cause.


If the universe was uncaused, and yet began, then you must explain how nothing changed, and yet the universe changed. It is a logical impossibility. Either the universe (or something which became the universe) changed, or nothing happened. But we know something happened, so something changed. Changes require causes. And around we go.

To this I received the following replies:

Cogitoergosum wrote:
What caused God to exist?
Or are you going to invent a special plea for GOD.

achilles12604 wrote:

Now if the universe began to exist and thus needed a cause, this cause had to meet certain criteria.

Criteria that you will invent to fit GOD.

Duke of Vandals wrote:

Cogitoergosum wrote:
What caused God to exist?
Or are you going to invent a special plea for GOD.

Cogi has asked an important question one which Christians do create special pleas for.

Goat Wrote:
You then declare God to be the one thing that 'always' existed, thereby giving
God an attribute that is not given to anything else. Because you say evertying was 'caused' to exist but god, you are using the logical fallacy of "Special Pleading".

From http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacie ... ading.html

Quote:
Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:


You are giving the special attribute to God of 'not being caused', and evertying else to 'have a cause'. There is no reason to do that, except to try to 'define' god into place.

So lets investigate the possibility of me using a special pleading in my logic.


Using Goats link to special pleading fallacies we get the definition of special pleading.

Description of Special Pleading

Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. Person A accepts standard(s) S and applies them to others in circumtance(s) C.
2. Person A is in circumstance(s) C.
3. Therefore A is exempt from S.

The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason for his exemption. That this sort of reasoning is fallacious is shown by the following extreme example:

1. Barbara accepts that all murderers should be punished for their crimes.
2. Although she murdered Bill, Barbara claims she is an exception because she really would not like going to prison.
3. Therefore, the standard of punishing murderers should not be applied to her.

This is obviously a blatant case of special pleading. Since no one likes going to prison, this cannot justify the claim that Barbara alone should be exempt from punishment.

Using their breakdown I will hence forth apply it in this manner:

G = God
U = Universe
CTC = criteria for cause


The claim made by these three non-theists is that I am using special pleading in reference to God.

The case I made about the universe is that anything which begins to exist must have a cause. Despite goat's demands that I prove this, it is a universally accepted scientific theory. If goat wants to debate this universally accepted fact then start a thread on it and I would like Goat to back up his demand for proof with at least ONE scientific source (author, magazine, anything at all) which agrees with him claim that something can in fact come from nothing and that things spontaneously occur without any reason what so ever.

Moving on with THIS topic, I made the following claims:

1) Anything which begins to exist, must have a cause.

2) The universe began to exist.

3) Therefore the universe must have a cause.

So long as my one assumption (anything that begins to exist must have a cause) is correct, this logic follows along correctly. So there is no fallacy here.

Next I wrote that the cause for the universe must have several attributes.

(disclaimer: before beginning I would like to point out that I am aware of the multiverse theory and that this totally unproven theory allows for the cause of THIS universe to be within another space and time. But then the problem is simply moved out one more universe so for the sake of moving the topic at hand along, I am going to assume only this universe exists)

1) It must be space less. By this I mean it must be outside the confines of the universe it created. This is because the cause of the universe can not depend on the universe's existence. Since the universe (remember my disclaimer) encompasses all matter, anything without anything, (no matter, space,etc) can be defined as space less.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_a ... 0902a.html

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/as ... AST224.HTM
Author: janette l gubala
What is beyond space?

Response #: 1 of 1
Author: asmith
Nothing! Either space goes on forever (is infinite) or it comes back around
in some kind of closed loop, but the way we understand space right now, it
is impossible for it to have any edges, and so there is no direction you
could point and say "50 yards in that direction space ends". Since there
are not any ends, there is not really any way to understand what "beyond"
means. But there could be other things that "exist" that are somehow
outside our own universe - parallel universes!

2) It must be timeless since without reference to space, time is meaningless. Einsteins theories show us the direct correlation of time and matter.

Now the universe does not fit these two criteria for obvious reasons. Therefore going back to my original point, the universe (U) can not fit the criteria for the cause of the universe (CFC).


Christian theology presents a God which does fit these criteria however. We portray him as both outside space and timeless. Also the design of God came BEFORE the criteria for creation.

So the argument we are just designing God to fit the criteria isn't valid since God pre-dates the criteria.

We can not be molding the criteria to fit God because the criteria for the cause of the universe is fixed. For example I could not make the claim that being 5'5" was a criteria for the cause of the universe because it invalidates the logical order of things because for anything to be 5'5" it must have something to compare to and it must already exist, both of which are impossible without the universe's existence.

So we Christians present a God whose characterizes were in existence before the question about the criteria for cause of the universe was asked. It is just a happy coincidence that the criteria of God and the criteria for the cause of the universe are the same. (or is it?)



IS MY ARGUMENT SPECIAL PLEADING?

The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason for his exemption.

This is the key sentence in deciding if I am guilty of special pleading or not. The standards I have set for the universe and deny for God fall into my first premise:

[center]Whatever begins to exist requires a cause[/center]

I say that this premise DOES apply to the universe and it DOES NOT apply to God.

Here is my reasoning for this.

Why it does apply to the universe:

Within this universe, every experience and experiment conducted by mankind shows that if nothing happens, then nothing happens. If you do not plant a seed, then a tree will not grow. However if a tree does grow, then a seed MUST have been planted. There is no alternative. Since this rule is consistent throughout the entire universe, it is logical to think that this same law applies to the universe itself. In addition to this we have evidence of such a beginning. We have discovered the once hypothetical background radiation which would have followed an explosive beginning to the universe. Red light shift indicates that all other galaxies are moving away from us. This would be very likely if the universe did have an explosive beginning but unlikely if the universe always was.

Why it does not apply to God:

Did God begin to exist? Scientifically there is no answer. The only answer can be found in theology and that answer is no.

It is important to remember here that I am not changing or reinventing God so he fits with the criteria of this argument. The idea that God was eternal dates back to at least the writing of genesis which is well before the BCE./CE switch. So I am not fitting the facts to God, not am I fitting God to the facts. They are both the same.

Once again the CFC of the universe is fixed. If the universe began (which is an accepted analysis of science), then its cause must fall within certain guidelines, which I established. The fact that the God described in the bible happens to fit these guidelines is not the product of theology but rather of coincidence.


CONCLUSION:

With my reasons for applying the criteria to the universe and not to God in mind I can safely say that I have not committed the logical fallacy of special pleading.

The only case in which I would have done this is if God was supposed to be held to the same standards as everything else within this universe. From Goat's source :

[center]2. Person A is in circumstance(s) C.[/center]

But the God of Christianity does not fit into the circumstances applied to the universe. The laws of the universe don't apply to God simply due to his nature.

Looking at this from the other side, if the laws of this universe applied to God, then god could not have been the first cause because he would be dependent on the universe. But then we are still left with the problem of the cause of the universe.

In essence what I am trying to say in as lengthy manner as possible is that whatever caused the universe, IS NOT bound by the laws of this universe. Therefore, I can not be guilty of special pleading because person A (God) is not in the circumstances described for and applied to the universe itself.

[The Duke of Vandals]

I am not trying to prove the correctness of my hypothesis. I am only trying to show that it is valid as a hypothesis.

So I don't need evidence to prove my hypothesis is correct.

How convenient for you?

Achilles, please do not waste our time with these tremendous cop outs.

Provide evidence that god does not need a beginning or concede the debate. That's once.

[The Duke of Vandals]

If I left out God entirely and substituted in the plausibility of a multiverse where other universes had different laws of physics I doubt you would fight me so hard. Yet this option yields the same result in my hypothesis as God does and contains the same amount of evidence for its existence as God does.

Please.

There is not a single scientist on the planet convinced of the multiverse the way Christians are convinced of god. The multiverse hypothesis is one critical step closer to being evidenced than the god hypothesis: We know one universe exists: our own.

God enjoys no such legitimacy.

Remember I am not trying to prove my theory is the one true correct one. Only that it is as plausible as any other that is out there currently.

When did you intend on beginning to do this?

I am not shifting any burden of proof because my invoking of God is NOTHING more than the very simple observation that the criteria for the cause of the unvierse is met with the biblical description of God.

Horrible evasion. You were shifting the burden of proof because you made an unsupported absurdist claim and then demanded others prove it false. Shall I quote it for you again?

[achilles12604]

The Duke of Vandals wrote:
Most of the silliness you've posited in the above post has already been dispelled by Dawkins and we have another thread where your special pleading is being torn to shreds.

There really wasn't anything to reply to. The god hypothesis is still untenable because it implies something very complex at a time of simplicity without giving the slightest explanation of how that complex thing could have come into being.

You are still trying to justify the magical appearance of a Boeing 747 before 1903 as an explanation for the Wright Brother's designs.

You are continuing to get my argument out of sequence.

I first went through using nothing but scientific observations to create the hypothesis that the universe needed a cause.

THIS is where you should be attacking.

Because all you are attacking is my inability to prove God. But God is not a pre-requisit for my argument. He is merely an observation after the fact.


There are other possibilities which fill in the same place as God would. However each of these is just a likely or unlikely as God for the time being.


To use your analogy all I am doing is saying that the charactistics of the machine the wright brothers used are the same as the 747 I already believe in.

[The Duke of Vandals]

Honestly, Achilles, your argument is a skyhook.

The skyhook is a special pleading for a thing that can hang in the sky supported by nothing. It is well defined as such, but when we ask "how does it hang in the sky?" we hear only crickets. Likewise, when we challenge the Christian with "why does god get to be uncaused" we hear similar silence or the sound & fury of invalid arguments.

Provide evidence that god can be uncaused or concede the debate. That's twice.

[achilles12604]

Horrible evasion. You were shifting the burden of proof because you made an unsupported absurdist claim and then demanded others prove it false. Shall I quote it for you again?

You mistook my use of God. So the beginning of this fallacy was when you assumed that I was depending on God's existence and characteristics to be correct and the basis of my arguement.


This is not what I did with my mention of God. Once again I made the simple observation that the Characteristics of God as described in the bible happened to match those of the cause.

Then you began to demand I prove God exists before I could make the observation I did.

You are the one guilty of a logical fallacy for doing this.

[The Duke of Vandals]

You are continuing to get my argument out of sequence.

I first went through using nothing but scientific observations to create the hypothesis that the universe needed a cause.

The order of your argument is irrelevant.

THIS is where you should be attacking.

Because all you are attacking is my inability to prove God. But God is not a pre-requisit for my argument. He is merely an invention to account for our lack of understanding.

Sir, the flaws in your argument are gaping enough that you telling me where to attack is comedic. By the by, I've corrected your above statement so that it makes sense.

You must prove (with evidence) that god is possible and prove that things without causes (like god) are possible.

There are other possibilities which fill in the same place as God would. However each of these is just a likely or unlikely as God for the time being.

Of course they're not.

Imagine for a moment that we're not two people on a message board discussing "How did the universe start?". Imagine we're two detectives attempting to figure out how a person died. There's a body on the floor in front of us. The body is intact: no lacerations, wounds, bruises or blood loss.

Effectively, you are implying that something obviously impossible & unevidenced killed him... like being shot in the head.

Without a bullet hole, "shot in the brain" is NOT as likely or unlikely as any other hypothesis.

Likewise, god is in no way as likely or unlikely an explanation as anything else: god is completely invalid.

To use your analogy all I am doing is saying that the charactistics of the machine the wright brothers used are the same as the 747 I already believe in.

Please do not try to use analogies. You have not demonstrated proficiency with them here. My analogy stands: god requires an explanation. What made god? What process did god evolve from? How were either possible at the beginning of the universe when only protons & electrons existed.

This is now the third time I've asked you to prove god is possible and the third time you'll no doubt evade.

[The Duke of Vandals]

You mistook my use of God. So the beginning of this fallacy was when you assumed that I was depending on God's existence and characteristics to be correct and the basis of my arguement.


This is not what I did with my mention of God. Once again I made the simple observation that the Characteristics of God as described in the bible happened to match those of the cause.

Then you began to demand I prove God exists before I could make the observation I did.

You are the one guilty of a logical fallacy for doing this.

Memories are short and understandings are tenuous.

Also, I don't have to prove God's eternal characteristics in order for my argument to work. Since you are equally unable to disprove it, it must be left as an unknown.

That, sir, is shifting the burden of proof.

You need to prove the characteristics of god you've alleged are possible or concede the debate. This is the fourth time.

[Goat]

In some ways, but in more it is the false dilemma you create. You say that everything must have a cause, nothing can come from nothing. So what is the cause of God (this is the special plea where you say that everything has a cause, but God requires no cause). The false dilemma is when you say the God was the cause to begin with.

This is where most people misunderstand what I write.

I never wrote

Everything must have a cause.



I never wrote everything must have a cause.

One more time . . . .

I never wrote everything must have a cause.






What I wrote was everything THAT BEGINS TO EXIST, must have a cause and this is still true.

If God did not begin to exist, then he doesn't require a cause.


This distinction is very important.


Is there a difference between these two sentences?

1) All toyotas must be red.

2) All cars must be red.


What is the difference? There is a big difference between these two sentences as well.

1) Everything must have a cause.

2) Everything which begins to exist must have a cause.

Is there anything beside God that did not 'begin to exist'?

Can you show that the 'universe' began to exist?
What if we lived in an endless universe ?

[Easyrider]

You need to prove the characteristics of god you've alleged are possible or concede the debate. This is the fourth time.

Proof is a scientific term for the most part. Science can neither prove NOR DISPROVE the existence of God or his characteristics. But the historical accounts of the Bible do provide an insight.

[Goat]

You need to prove the characteristics of god you've alleged are possible or concede the debate. This is the fourth time.

Proof is a scientific term for the most part. Science can neither prove NOR DISPROVE the existence of God or his characteristics. But the historical accounts of the Bible do provide an insight.

Yes indeed.

And one important insite is 'God is not a man, and god is not the son of man'.

That eliminates Jesus as being God.