Version 2 of God argument 1

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Version 2 of God argument 1

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(1) The Universe is contingent upon "prior" conditions (conditions that existed "prior" to our understanding of space/time:





(2) By definition the "ultimate" origin cannot be contingent, since it would reuqire the explaination of still prior conditions (a string of infinite contingencies with no necessity is logical nonsense;the existence of contingent conditions requires the existence of necessary conditions).

(3) Therefore, the universe must have emerged from some prior condition which always existed, is self sufficient, and not dependent upon anything "higher."


(4) Naturalistic assumptions of determinism, and the arbitrary nature of naturalistic cosmology creates an arbitrary necessity; if the UEO has to produce existents automatically and/or deterministically due to naturalistic forces, the congtingencies function as necessities

(5) Therefore, since arbitrary necessities are impossible by nature of their absurdity, thus we should attribute creation to an act of the will; the eternal existent must be possessed of some ability to create at will; and thus must possess will.

Corollary:


(6) An eternal existent which creates all things and chooses to do so is compatible with the definition of "God" found in any major world religion, and therefore, can be regarded as God. Thus God must exist QED!













(a) Prior condition being space/time, or gravitational field.

Matter, energy, all physical phenomena stem from 'gravitational field' the prior condition of which is he big bang, the prior condition of which is the singularity, the prior condition of which is...we do not know.


(b)All naturalistic phenomena are empirically derived, thus they are contingent by their very nature.


As Karl Popper said, empirical facts are facts which might not have been. Everything that belongs to space time is a contingent truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something.(Antony Flew, Philosophical Dictionary New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.)

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Post #61

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if you don't like tough toe nails. I am not going to do this with you. You are not a genius I am a Ph.D student. I've told you who to call and what depeartment, you chose not to now live with it.
Can we guess the fallacy and assumptions? You just never tire of telling us about you and why you are right while telling everyone else how stupid, uneducated, ignorant, and wrong we are.
I noticed it is true for everything you preach. It is interesting to watch you struggle with you fundamentalist roots with liberal (Neo-Orthodox) thinking. You want both worlds and both ways. Some convince themselves and ignore their doubt by looking for affirmation. Sometimes they have problems when they don’t get it and start throwing fits and insult the confused and unconvinced with the mistaken belief they couldn’t be at fault because there are convinced they did it right.
I ask for a list of your teachers the person at the department could be describing someone going there that is not you. How does calling the department help? Now if they say you are full of yourself and have esteem issues that would narrow it down. It they said you are obsessive and read something and get all caught up in it while missing most of it. It is getting there. If they say he has to always be right and will argue in circles and change meaning and subject to avoid getting cornered I would think they have you pegged and it is the might be right person. I could go on and on but you get the drift. Think I would ask what they think of you. I would like the list of both teachers you like and don’t like. Can I get their numbers too?
I would like to contact the guy/gal/person/persons that didn’t know who Paul Tillich was.
I would love to know what old shubert ogden thinks of you and your work. Do you have a phobia about spell checker? I know I forget all the time. You know where I can get a free speech to text program? I get the feeling that you are searching for an authority trying to prevent the identification with what you call free will. You just need an argument that lets you rest and find closer. Maybe even a hug.

What you call prior condition is an abstraction from the object. You confuse cause and effect with causality. Both are abstractions from how we separate and make distinctions.
You say your argument does not address causality or hang on it. Yet you whole argument assumes it. You are not begging the question or problem you just ignore it and pass over it with a few quotes making claims beyond their scope or even the references you use. If anyone objects you yell what a great number “one” or “two” he or she is, mostly he of course. I have a problem with you whole contingency and causality scheme. I am trying to get to it. I want to be clear as my little brain allows so there is no mistaking what I am saying and what you are leaving out.
You are confusing cause with relationship. Things are because of their relationships to other things. It is experienced and is experiences. That is contingent. Related and cause is an abstraction. Contingency is or was and we have no way knowing if it was unnecessary, necessary or accidental. We have not experienced nothingness. We experience and name things nothingness would be an abstraction from something.


. I agree with it! I didn't say there are not causes, I said my argument doesn't turn on them. There are many atheists who argue that c/e is a matter of this space/time but it can't be proven that the rules are the same elsewhere, beyond event horizon. But there are many who argue that we can't show a need for a cause in contemplating the origin of the universe. So I structured my argument such that it does not require a proof of causeality to proceed as a cosmological argument.
conservation of energy is a Newtonian law, it only applies to a non qauntum universe. Atheists are always arguing that Quantum theory proves there is no need to appeal to causes in origin of the universe. That's another reason I structured the arguemnt to get around the need for causes.

A cosmological argument for God with out cause or even addressing the problem of cause? How can that be?
If it does not turn on causality how does it become a cosmological argument?


Causality requires linear direction and time.

Time is a measurement of change and is related to something at one experience that wasn’t previous present experience. But I like Whitehead and Hartshorne think God is contingent but I am not so convinced of a non-contingent nature that is not the same for the universe as a whole including God. I do see the possibility for God to be equated to the universe and reality and therefore not a necessary distinction. But I like the vision they present for its beauty.
I am sentimental like that sometimes.

Later I wil get back to your OP.
I a still trying to catch up with the other cosmological thread.

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Post #62

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Cathar1950 wrote:
if you don't like tough toe nails. I am not going to do this with you. You are not a genius I am a Ph.D student. I've told you who to call and what depeartment, you chose not to now live with it.
Can we guess the fallacy and assumptions? You just never tire of telling us about you and why you are right while telling everyone else how stupid, uneducated, ignorant, and wrong we are.
you never tire of making my personality the issue becauseyou can't argue. you can't deal with the issues.


I noticed it is true for everything you preach. It is interesting to watch you struggle with you fundamentalist roots with liberal (Neo-Orthodox) thinking. You want both worlds and both ways. Some convince themselves and ignore their doubt by looking for affirmation. Sometimes they have problems when they don’t get it and start throwing fits and insult the confused and unconvinced with the mistaken belief they couldn’t be at fault because there are convinced they did it right.
There's your genetic fallacy again, if I can name where an idea comes from I've defeated it. That is silly. But if you know anything at all about theology you know that tension is very inmportant in theology. I find a tension between the loving father figure God and the Hegelian sort of dialetical process God. So what if I have tensions that I try to work betwen? Does that mean they are wrong. Does that any bearing on the cosmological arugment? Now of course. how does that follow.

you use those tems like acusations "You fundie!" "You neo-orhtodox." you expect me tos ay "No not that! please don't think I"m (snif) neo-orhtodox!" ?? What is that about? who cares? why can't you deal with the issues?




I ask for a list of your teachers the person at the department could be describing someone going there that is not you. How does calling the department help? Now if they say you are full of yourself and have esteem issues that would narrow it down.
I gave a list of professors. calling the department will obviously hep because they can "yeeeeeess he was a doctoral studnet here." why didn't you call? hu? you afraid? you haven't called the profs either.

call Billy Abraham at Perkins and ask him if he thinks I'm the idiot you think I am, or if he thinks I have the protenital to be a fine theologian. go on and ask him!



It they said you are obsessive and read something and get all caught up in it while missing most of it. It is getting there.
I am a far better student than you ever thoguht about being. you are pathetic you can't deal with lotic, you have to attack persnalities. do you not see what you are donig here? this nothing more than character assasinatino/

you are fool yuo are an idiot. you dont' know Moltmann you liar. you are an idiot an liar.

you can' think. you have no sopehticated ideas at all. all you can is toss labes around because you can't think about real ideas.

call billy "Abram !!

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Post #63

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you are fool yuo are an idiot. you dont' know Moltmann you liar. you are an idiot an liar.
I met him at a talk he gave in Grand Rapids after a friend of mine turned me on to his work and after reading a few of his books we went to see him talk and talked briefly after.. It was in 1980 or 81. I still have 5 or 6 of his books.
Now I am an idiot and a liar. Talk about character assassination.
At least I was correct and funny when I mentioned some of you personality flaws that make it difficult for you to play like the other kids.

But if you know anything at all about theology you know that tension is very inmportant in theology.

Coherence is important too. Do mean tension or contradiction and paradox?
I find a tension between the loving father figure God and the Hegelian sort of dialetical process God.
Dialectical and process thought, with feel good theology how delightful.

Do you have the fellow at Perkins number?

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Post #64

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Cathar1950 wrote:
you are fool yuo are an idiot. you dont' know Moltmann you liar. you are an idiot an liar.
I met him at a talk he gave in Grand Rapids after a friend of mine turned me on to his work and after reading a few of his books we went to see him talk and talked briefly after.. It was in 1980 or 81. I still have 5 or 6 of his books.
Now I am an idiot and a liar. Talk about character assassination.
At least I was correct and funny when I mentioned some of you personality flaws that make it difficult for you to play like the other kids.

I dont' have any personality flaws.
Meta:But if you know anything at all about theology you know that tension is very inmportant in theology.

Coherence is important too. Do mean tension or contradiction and paradox?




there is nothing incoherent about any of the things I've said. Obviously tension would be the appropriate word since we are dealing with contradictory aspects of God, but they are not actually contraidctions because they are possible.

I find a tension between the loving father figure God and the Hegelian sort of dialetical process God.
Dialectical and process thought, with feel good theology how delightful.

where did you get the idea that naming an idea makes it go away? Yes it is dialectical and process those are important to me. I do have a thing about the warm fuzzy aspects because I've experinced them. so what's wrong with that. does knowing the names make them no good anymore?


Do you have the fellow at Perkins number?

call info, get the SMU switchboard number, ask them for his office number.

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Post #65

Post by Furrowed Brow »

Hi Metacrock

I think you are blending responses. Some of that last response did not seem to be addressed at anything I had said previously. And whoever it was aimed, even if it was me, I think you need to calm down and and focus on your argument.

I'm not trying to mock you or Trip you up Metacrock. I'm just striving for a rigorous debate.
Metacrock wrote:As Karl Popper said, empirical facts are facts which might not have been. Everything that belongs to space time is a contingent truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something.(Antony Flew, Philosophical Dictionary New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.)
And where in anything said there do you have licence to posit your premises 1, 2, 3 and 4. In particular lets compare your point 1.
Metacrock wrote:(1) The Universe is contingent upon "prior" conditions (conditions that existed "prior" to our understanding of space/time):
Flew wrote:...everything that belongs to space time is contingent...
So Flew is saying everything that belongs to space time is contingent, but you are talking about the universe being contingent upon conditions prior to space/time. Your interpretation of Flew appears to be fallacious.

Flew - Everting in the Universe is contingent
Metacrock - the Universe itself is contingent.

You cannot use Flew or Popper to support the latter claim. Alternatively, accepting that your use of "the Universe" = "everything in the Universe that belongs to space time", this still does not give you licence to add the qualification in parentheses, or in any way build an argument to say those condition are necessities.

You can argue that if you want, but don't put that down to Popper.
As Karl Popper himself and not Flew wrote: ...I replace Hume's 'instances of which we have expereince' by 'test statements' - that, is, singular statements describing observable events...;and 'instances of which we have no expereince' by 'explanatory universal theoreis'.

I formulate Hume's logical problem of induction as follows:

L1 Can the claim that an explanatory universal theory is true be justifed by 'empircal reasons'; that is, by assuming the truth of certain test statements....

My answer to the problem is the same as Hume's: No

Popper., K., Objective Knowledge, Chapter 1: Conjectural knowledge: My solution of the Problem of Induction, p12, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979.
Now I'd say your argument is an attempt to build an explanatory universal theory. In which case you cannot build your argument from empirical test statements. So what statements is your argument based on? Well some pretty big metaphysical presumptions like "The Universe is contingent upon "prior" conditions "

However I don't think you argument relies on empirical test statements per se, rather your argument is talking about causality in itself as it is out there in reality. But we cannot think or talk about what is out therein reality, without test statements. Besides from the various problems already pointed out and which you fail to engage with, all the way down the line you have displayed a systematic tendency to confuse the contingency of our knowledge (the empirical problem) with a physical/metaphysical contingency in itself. I suspect that is in large part due to reading way too much into that quote by Flew.

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Post #66

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Furrowed Brow wrote:Hi Metacrock

I think you are blending responses. Some of that last response did not seem to be addressed at anything I had said previously. And whoever it was aimed, even if it was me, I think you need to calm down and and focus on your argument.

I'm not trying to mock you or Trip you up Metacrock. I'm just striving for a rigorous debate.

I think you are using the word "blending" wrong. We need to have Presidential commission to study it.


Metacrock wrote:As Karl Popper said, empirical facts are facts which might not have been. Everything that belongs to space time is a contingent truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something.(Antony Flew, Philosophical Dictionary New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.)
And where in anything said there do you have licence to posit your premises 1, 2, 3 and 4. In particular lets compare your point 1.


why not? what sort of licence do I need?

Metacrock wrote:(1) The Universe is contingent upon "prior" conditions (conditions that existed "prior" to our understanding of space/time):
Flew wrote:...everything that belongs to space time is contingent...
So Flew is saying everything that belongs to space time is contingent, but you are talking about the universe being contingent upon conditions prior to space/time. Your interpretation of Flew appears to be fallacious.




more knit picking. minor ponit here. I am clearly not saying that premise one is an extension this quote. I'm saying this quote estabilshes the point that naturlsitic things are contingent. then havnig understand that we can see that the univrse is contingent upon prior conditoins and thus it is contingent. So it's an exptrapoloation of a principle documented by this quote. that's just the way doucmentaiton in debate is suppossed to work. you weren't a college debater were you? I can tell becasue you don't seem to tubmle to the way evidence is used.

Flew - Everting in the Universe is contingent
Metacrock - the Universe itself is contingent.

You cannot use Flew or Popper to support the latter claim.
yes of course certainly you can. Why? because they use the same principle. It's an extension, it's a valid extension becasue it turns on the same concept being used. he says the reason its contingent is because it might have been otherwise, and that means its' dependent for its existence upon prior conditions. that's exactly why I say the universe is contingent, because it might have been other wise becasue it's dependent upon prior conditions. so having established that principle of why naturilstic pheomena is contingent I extend the princple to show it applys to the whole universe.

Of cousre that is exactly what one does with evience in debate!


Alternatively, accepting that your use of "the Universe" = "everything in the Universe that belongs to space time", this still does not give you licence to add the qualification in parentheses, or in any way build an argument to say those condition are necessities.
sure it does.
You can argue that if you want, but don't put that down to Popper.
I really wish you would learn how debate works instead of just carping on little bitty unimportant trvial minutia that is just par for the course in any debate round on any given saturday in any college tourement.





As Karl Popper himself and not Flew wrote: ...I replace Hume's 'instances of which we have expereince' by 'test statements' - that, is, singular statements describing observable events...;and 'instances of which we have no expereince' by 'explanatory universal theoreis'.



I formulate Hume's logical problem of induction as follows:

L1 Can the claim that an explanatory universal theory is true be justifed by 'empircal reasons'; that is, by assuming the truth of certain test statements....

My answer to the problem is the same as Hume's: No

Popper., K., Objective Knowledge, Chapter 1: Conjectural knowledge: My solution of the Problem of Induction, p12, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979.
Now I'd say your argument is an attempt to build an explanatory universal theory. In which case you cannot build your argument from empirical test statements. So what statements is your argument based on? Well some pretty big metaphysical presumptions like "The Universe is contingent upon "prior" conditions "

That makes no sense at all. You are playing little games grow up! Frist of all its' not an to "build a expalinitory thoery." It's a philosophical argument, not a scietnific hyopothesis. there will no empirical hypothesis testing Secondly, there is absoluty no reason in all of logic why I can't make a metaphysical assupmtion.

science is a methaphysical assumption

mateiralism is a metaphysical assumption

your rejection of superanturalism is a metaphsyical assumption

all of your arguments are metaphysical assumtpions.

your assertion that I can't make test case statemetns is a metaphysical assumption. your knit picking is a metaphsyical assupmtion.
However I don't think you argument relies on empirical test statements per se, rather your argument is talking about causality in itself as it is out there in reality. But we cannot think or talk about what is out therein reality, without test statements.

The argument is based upon modal loic; necessity and contingency. It does ot turn cause and effect, except in so far as they are tangential to the ideas of necessity and contignency.


Besides from the various problems already pointed out and which you fail to engage with, all the way down the line you have displayed a systematic tendency to confuse the contingency of our knowledge (the empirical problem) with a physical/metaphysical contingency in itself. I suspect that is in large part due to reading way too much into that quote by Flew.

in other words I havn't let your minuta and knit picking get in the way of a real argument.

clearly the argument incorporates both logical and ontological necessity.

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Post #67

Post by Cathar1950 »

What you don’t understand is that you do not have an argument or a debate.
You are playing little games grow up!
That is just an insult and groundless comment. If you were in a debate you would lose points.

Your whole argument is baseless and your sources irrelevant. You have nothing to go on prior to contingency. Contingency is more then cause it exists and is related. Your philosophical argument has no substance. With out time, causality, and contingency you have no bases for discussion and can’t seem to see that.
You have no way of empirically knowing or understanding of how it could be otherwise.
There is nothing meaningful you can say about prior conditions before there were conditions. It is empty.

If you read Popper and others you would see that metaphysical assumptions must at least not be falsified. Speculating on what is prior to contingency of the whole universe is like saying “green bells”, it makes no sense, you ignore these problems and write the questions off as a defect in others debating skills or knowledge as well as their intelligence and honesty. That is not debating; it is slander.
so having established that principle of why naturilstic pheomena is contingent I extend the princple to show it applys to the whole universe.
Here you fail to show the depth of what is meant by contingency and pass it off as “cause and effect” with a clear use of the “fallacy of misplace concrescence”. Cause is an abstraction of experience and relationship remembered. There is no way of showing it was not necessary with out going backwards in time and presenting an experiment. Each new occasion is a new experience with its own set of causal relationships. You make the obvious obscure.
Popper would say that what distinguishes empirical from metaphysical statements is “observational falsifiable” as it concerns “a priori” statements. You make leaps into the unknowable as it relates to time, space and contingency to make your argument work and hid behind modal logic and unclear substitutions for not dealing with the issue causality and its connection to contingency. Your little exercise might work in some informal debate where the other person is in Junior high school but you seem to be missing many steps and connections as you present a disputed argument among philosophical peers.
You don’t have anything more then a previous cosmological argument that ignores causality for the benefit of your argument.

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Post #68

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Cathar1950 wrote:What you don’t understand is that you do not have an argument or a debate.
You are playing little games grow up!
That is just an insult and groundless comment. If you were in a debate you would lose points.

debates are not judged by points. you know anything about them.

Your whole argument is baseless and your sources irrelevant. You have nothing to go on prior to contingency. Contingency is more then cause it exists and is related.

you really don't listen you have no reading comprehension at all. I know its more than cause obviously, that's why I said my argument turn on causes. that's why I said contignency is not cause or effect. you just dont' even listen.

that's why you dont get it about the year AD 50, when I said I'm not hung up on PMR circulating in that year litterally and you go on raving no my blog as though I didn't even say that.


Your philosophical argument has no substance. With out time, causality, and contingency you have no bases for discussion and can’t seem to see that.



stop posturing. that doesn't make you right. Look at how stupid this statment is:

(1) no substance.

if I prove that there msut be an eternal origin and that it corrolates to that which we describe as God, that gives us a rational warrant for believing there is a god. that accompilshes the task I set for myself so that is pretty significant.

(2) without time no basis

I said no tmie means no becoming. thus we can't start form nothingness. you immediately tranfur that into "there's no time" as though my arguemnt argues for no tme. what a stupid thing to conlcude! it's the oppossite of what I'm arguing again. no reading comprehension.

(3) without causality

Obviously I didn't say there is no causality. I said the argument doesn't have to turn on that, and I prove it by deliniating a concept of "prior conditon" which you do not touch.

(4) without contingency?

Obvioulsy the argument argument is not wihtout that since I aruge the unvierse is contingent. I dont' think you really undersatnd what you read.


You have no way of empirically knowing or understanding of how it could be otherwise.
There is nothing meaningful you can say about prior conditions before there were conditions. It is empty.

science has managed to say meaningful things abou that, or they think they have. one finds pronoucements on string theory and inflationary universe where they speculate about origin form nothingess and membranes that always existed transuring unvierses from one membranie to another. Obvoiusly since there are sicentits who think they speaking meaningfully about that I can use their "meaningful statments" and play off of them.



If you read Popper and others you would see that metaphysical assumptions must at least not be falsified. Speculating on what is prior to contingency of the whole universe is like saying “green bells”, it makes no sense, you ignore these problems and write the questions off as a defect in others debating skills or knowledge as well as their intelligence and honesty. That is not debating; it is slander.

nononono, you misunderstand Popper. he says things can only be falisfied they cannot be verfied. he says falsification is the basis of hypothesis testing. the alternative to that is metaphysical assumtions that are not falisifed. they are falifiable but not falsified.

my argument is such because one could falsify it by disproving the big bang for example. but this has not been done.



so having established that principle of why naturilstic pheomena is contingent I extend the princple to show it applys to the whole universe.
Here you fail to show the depth of what is meant by contingency and pass it off as “cause and effect” with a clear use of the “fallacy of misplace concrescence”.

You really do have problems understanding what you read. that is the oppossite of what I said. I nowhwere in anyway pass off contingency as cause and effect. certinaly not i dieneied that directly. I said c/e is indluded but contingency is not limted to effects and necessiteis aren ot limited to causes. do you understand what that means?


Cause is an abstraction of experience and relationship remembered. There is no way of showing it was not necessary with out going backwards in time and presenting an experiment. Each new occasion is a new experience with its own set of causal relationships. You make the obvious obscure.

Of course there is. any effect can be understood as contingent upon its cause. If the cause was removed the effect would not occur. Thus we can assume a relationship such that x would not have existed if it were not y upon which it is dependent. this is not limited to just cause and effect but also interviening veriables. for example if no ocean no fish. ocean does not cause fish, but they are still dependent upon it.


Popper would say that what distinguishes empirical from metaphysical statements is “observational falsifiable” as it concerns “a priori” statements. You make leaps into the unknowable as it relates to time, space and contingency to make your argument work and hid behind modal logic and unclear substitutions for not dealing with the issue causality and its connection to contingency
.



No that is total BS. you are just gainsaying the evdience. we can use big bang cosmology as much as we like. any logical exstension of something that is so accepted by the scientific world has to be understood as more than mere conjecutre or specualtion. Its' the state of the art, the conesus in scientifc understanding, nothing could be mroe reasonable than to assume it.

Moreover, I am not saying that emprical data is transfurable to metaphysical statmetns. I'm saying that all statements about the nature of things automatically invovle methaphical assumptions. Not that empirical becomes metaphsycial, but taht metaphysical ungirds empirical in terms the assumptions made.



Your little exercise might work in some informal debate where the other person is in Junior high school but you seem to be missing many steps and connections as you present a disputed argument among philosophical peers
.

Robert Koons of UT likes my argument.

You don’t have anything more then a previous cosmological argument that ignores causality for the benefit of your argument.
several professsional philosphers have pronouced my arugment good. you know nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing.


here is Clarke's version. this is a major version of the argument which ha endured for three centuries.


English theologian and philosopher Samuel Clarke set forth a second variation of the Cosmological Argument, which is considered to be a superior version. It is called the “Argument from Contingency”.

Clarke’s “Argument from Contingency”:

1. Every being that exists is either contingent or necessary.

2. Not every being can be contingent.

3. Therefore, there exists a necessary being on which the contingent beings depend.

4. A necessary being, on which all contingent things depend, is what we mean by “God”.

5. Therefore, God exists.



do you see the similarity to mine? can you see why mine is better?




My own simplistically boilded down version of Koon's argument:


assumptions



1) Every wholly contingent fact has a cause. (facts that are partly or wholly necessary need not)


2) Applying aggregation axiom, anything of a kin dk = such a thing as arrgigate of all kinds.


3) Aggreagates can't exist unless all parts exist (which means necessary aggregate must have Necessary parts, contingent aggregate must have contingent parts. The result is necessary and contingnet facts which means contingent aggregate as a whole).
4) Absolutely necessary facts cannot be caused, therefore, wholly contingent facts (those whith only contingent parts) can be caused.


5) Causal principle can be thought of as empirically supported (effects not limited to a particular region of space/time in the case of physical laws for example, :. we have reason to suspect that all contingent facts have causes).

(Quantum theory is not a case to the contrary)


7) Causes make effect probable rather than necessary.

Normally a wholly contingent situation has a cause.


9) Experince warrants default of the causal principle in the absense of evidence to the contrary any wholly contingent situation has a cause.


The burden of proof shifts to atheist to prove why we should think of the universe as an exception just because it springs up beyond time.


10) If causes don't necessitate their effects, if cause and effect is probablistic, and after all that's what the atheist says with QM, than we must extend the probablity of the causal principle until showen some reason why we should not.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Argument:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) The universe is a giant web of contingency


2) Since the whole of the universe is contingency the universe itself is wholly contingent


3) Therefore, we can understand contingency as necessary through a defesable assumtion of probablity.


4) We can assume that causes do not necessitate their effects (from 3)


5) Therefore, temporal nature of causality cannot be assumped to equal an uncaused non contingent universe unless the atheist can demonstrate some reason why we should understand it that way.


We have precident for assuming universe is caused..


6) It is the atheist burden of proof to show that the default assumption should be set in this manner.


7) If the atheist does go with this assumption, he is going to evoke absoulte skepticism.

can you see the similarities here?

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Wyvern
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Post #69

Post by Wyvern »

The difference between yours and Koon's arguments is that his is entirely framed within the rules of our universe hence he is able to use our rules of logic. Your argument on the other hand assumes the conditions which created the universe were the same as those of the universe which came to be. You have to do this in order for your rules of logic to work. Unfortunately this is an assumption which has no basis.

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Metacrock
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Post #70

Post by Metacrock »

Wyvern wrote:The difference between yours and Koon's arguments is that his is entirely framed within the rules of our universe hence he is able to use our rules of logic.
No, the differnce is his is inductive, mine is deductive.





Your argument on the other hand assumes the conditions which created the universe were the same as those of the universe which came to be. You have to do this in order for your rules of logic to work. Unfortunately this is an assumption which has no basis.

that is totally vaild. It's your bop to show that there's some reason why I shouldn't. You want to assume a ruels change, but no law says there has to be one. I's totallyl logical to assume that these might be only rules that work. thus they have to be the same since a univese got formed.

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