The "Supernatural": Burden of Proof?

[boatsnguitars]

Question:
Why should the burden of proof be placed on Supernaturalists (those who believe in the supernatural) to demonstrate the existence, qualities, and capabilities of the supernatural, rather than on Materialists to disprove it, as in "Materialists have to explain why the supernatural can't be the explanation"?

Argument:

Placing the burden of proof on Supernaturalists to demonstrate the existence, qualities, and capabilities of the supernatural is a logical and epistemologically sound approach. This perspective aligns with the principles of evidence-based reasoning, the scientific method, and critical thinking. Several key reasons support this stance.

Default Position of Skepticism: In debates about the supernatural, it is rational to start from a position of skepticism. This is in line with the philosophical principle of "nullius in verba" (take nobody's word for it) and the scientific principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Therefore, the burden of proof should fall on those making the extraordinary claim of the existence of the supernatural.

Presumption of Naturalism: Throughout the history of scientific inquiry, the default assumption has been naturalism. Naturalism posits that the universe and its phenomena can be explained by natural laws and processes without invoking supernatural entities or forces. This presumption is based on the consistent success of naturalistic explanations in understanding the world around us. After all, since both the Naturalist and Supernaturalist believe the Natural exists, we only need to establish the existence of the Supernatural (or, whatever someone decides to posit beyond the Natural.)

Absence of Empirical Evidence: The supernatural, by its very nature, is often described as beyond the realm of empirical observation and measurement. Claims related to the supernatural, such as deities, spirits, or paranormal phenomena, typically lack concrete, testable evidence. Therefore, it is incumbent upon those advocating for the supernatural to provide compelling and verifiable evidence to support their claims.

Problem of Unfalsifiability: Many supernatural claims are unfalsifiable: they cannot be tested or disproven. This raises significant epistemological challenges. Demanding that Materialists disprove unfalsifiable supernatural claims places an unreasonable burden on them. Instead, it is more reasonable to require Supernaturalists to provide testable claims and evidence.

In conclusion, the burden of proof should rest on Supernaturalists to provide convincing and verifiable evidence for the existence, qualities, and capabilities of the supernatural. This approach respects the principles of skepticism, scientific inquiry, and parsimonious reasoning, ultimately fostering a more rational and evidence-based discussion of the supernatural in the context of understanding our world and its mysteries.

If they can't provide evidence of the supernatural, then there is no reason for Naturalists to take their claims seriously: Any of their claims that include the supernatural. That includes all religious claims that involve supernatural claims.

I challenge Supernaturalists to defend the single most important aspect at the core of their belief. We all know they can't (they would have by now), but the burden is on them, and it's high time they at least give an honest effort.

Please note: Arguments from Ignorance will be summarily dismissed.

[Purple Knight]

Why? We don't see anything pop into being, we just see things that are already in being, changing. We have no evidence to suggest that if things pop into being, they must have a cause, because we have never seen anything pop into being. When things change it has a cause. When things begin to exist, perhaps not.

Why treat a beginning that changes already present stuff from a beginning that comes out of nothing? What is it about the different properties of nothingness (there aren’t even any) that should make us think a beginning out of nothing can do so uncaused while a beginning that is a change of something else never does? And, if it could, why hasn’t it ever happened again? Why doesn’t energy/matter or other things pop into existence since then uncaused.

The Kalam is the argument that posits that things - everything - has a marked beginning. It's the thing conflating changes (which often cause other changes) with beginnings. I'm not doing that. I'm just working with the Kalam's assumptions because that's what's fair. First the Kalam says, we have to go on what we can see. We see that things (here is the conflation, because it really means changes, where it later sidles in the idea that things exist at all) have causes, so if you roll it back far enough, and we assume that nothing comes from nothing, and that it's not just infinite causes, there must have been a First Cause. You don't get this without the assumed premise that we have to go on what we can see. And that doesn't get us to what might happen in a true vacuum because we've never seen that. Once we say, we're going on what we can see, yes the idea that there is a First Cause if it's not causes all the way down to infinity, is valid. But we also have to accept that we don't know what happens in nothingness because we haven't seen nothingness.

Here's where it gets definitional. You say, our natural world must have a First Cause and call it God. What if the universe is God? What if we're living inside the First Cause? Then you're saying, God must have a cause. The Kalam still applies. All of this must have a First Cause. It can't have come into being from nothing - that's worse than magic. And we also assume, it can't always have existed. If we apply those things to God we just get turtles all the way down again. Saying God is supernatural is a dodge. The universe might be supernatural. You yourself say it has supernatural things in it.

First, the ‘universe’ is simply all of nature. It doesn’t have supernatural things “in” it. Reality (which I believe is a higher category than ‘natural’ or ‘the universe’) has supernatural things in it, but not the ‘universe’.

Then this non-supernatural universe is just an arbitrary definitional line, too. If we have souls in us and they interact with us, you're not saying anything about what happens in reality, you're just talking about what you call different parts of reality.

Second, I don’t say the natural world must have a first cause and then say “it’s God” and then bring in all the things I believe about this God (the omnis, etc.). I reason that the natural world must have a first cause. I then reason that this first cause must have characteristics A, B, C, etc. After that process, the A, B, C, etc. looks like the foundation of what we call “God”, so the label comes in, then and only then. So it’s not turtles all the way down. It’s turtles however far done, but at some point you get a non-turtle. Then you find out what we can know about this non-turtle.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with the process. I agree that you might as well label this powerful First Cause, God. I disagree with the idea that it has to be a separate entity.

Let me reverse the second question: If a universe could come into being from God, why doesn't it happen today? It's the same set of answers. It's the same set of objections.

No, it’s not the same. A personal cause (which we eventually connect with our label God) has free will and can choose whether to create new energy/matter or not. There is no property about nothingness and no constraint on nothingness to explain why it only happened once and never again.

Sure there is: That's if popping into being is something that can only happen in total nothingness. We don't know what does, or does not, happen in nothingness. Besides, you are a sentient being. And you don't know about God's motives. So compare things you have done multiple times with things you have only done once. You have done many things, many times. You have done something once, and only once, that you know you will not do again, very sparingly. There's every motive for your particular God to blow up the universe and start again. And that's the thing: He might have. If he'll drown us all and start again with Noah, how can we know he didn't drown the natural world and make another Adam? We don't know that. We don't know there aren't many pocket universes right now, that simply don't interact with one another.

You think God made everything natural. Does that mean he made the emptiness between stars? But wait... Wouldn't the Nothing we're to assume ought to exist if God never did anything, just look like empty space? If you were to put on a space suit and ask God to delete everything but you, and he did it, I don't know how you could say you floating there would be any different than floating in space now. If space is expanding but there's nothing in it, you wouldn't know and indeed it would be meaningless to say it was expanding, or was not expanding.

Emptiness isn’t a “thing” that can be made. The possible similarity in how emptiness within space-time looks and what nothingness would look like doesn’t mean they are the same thing. The only way space could be expanding is if space itself is some kind of material, so it wouldn’t be meaningless to talk about it expanding.

I'm pretty sure they're talking about stars moving apart from one another. But the fact remains, if emptiness can't be made, but it is natural and not supernatural, you have to categorise it according to your definition as either natural or supernatural, just like we have to call 0 a number. Empty sets aren't logically null just because they have no properties. They must fit somewhere. If emptiness is natural, then God did not make everything natural, even if it's because emptiness can't be made. For your argument to work, you'd have to categorise emptiness as supernatural. And then, things might arise from it unbidden.

The universe seems to be eternal. It is, if you nail it down to what we can observe today. Things don't pop into being, but they don't wink out, either.

There might be some (unintended) equivocation going on here with ‘eternal’. We’ve talked about timelessness, we’ve talked about having no beginning or end, we’ve talked about only not having an end. These are all different concepts that have had the same term applied. The spatial-temporal universe is not eternal for the reasons offered in defense of premise 2 (which we haven’t actually talked about directly, but we can). Not winking out is not enough to qualify for what we mean when talking about that kind of ‘eternal’.

So then, maybe God had a beginning. Maybe the Christian God literally exists, but he's not the First Cause. Some other thing is. Or maybe the First Cause actually popped into being. Supernatural things might easily do so. The idea of it always having been there is suspect, if we're not saying eternal means no beginning.

If you're not, then God had the matter and energy to start with, the universe was already present, and it doesn't really matter whether he was a building, organising force, or not.

Oh, I see what you mean now. Yes, I believe in creation from nothing in that way. How does reason say no to this?

I don't think reason does say things can't pop into being, but the Kalam says things don't pop into being. I don't have a problem with things popping into being. A good answer to why they don't do that now, is that the bucket is already full, so it can't get more water in it than is already there. Maybe in terms of life, the universe, and everything, empty buckets do spawn water. We don't know, because we've never seen an empty bucket.

Either way it's zero loose ends. Zero things are unexplained. If we're rolling the universe back to one unexplained thing, that's just passing the buck on being unable to explain the universe, isn't it? It serves as no explanation at all, because we started with one unexplained thing (why there is something, rather than nothing) and ended with one unexplained thing, about which we ought to ask, at the dawn of time, why is there God, rather than nothing?

Yes, at some point, there must be a brute fact, but it matters whether there is good reason to believe B or A is a brute fact. We know B isn’t a brute fact and its existence (which we are sure of) necessitates the brute fact of A. That’s a key difference for A over B.

Why? Why can't reality itself be the brute fact?

The idea that there is a possible uncaused cause, is an explanation. But there may as well be a dozen or a million. Because once we're saying that's possible, it's possible, and if anything we need an explanation for why there was only one.

It’s not about there possibly being an uncaused cause, but there actually being an uncaused cause. The “might as well be a dozen or a million” is only a possibly because there is no reason in its favor and at least one (simplicity) against it.

Simplicity does not necessarily favour something happening only once, and as you point out, if something could occur "naturally" (in this case meaning, from nothing) we would need a reason that it did happen only once. Simplicity would favour something that could occur in given conditions, occurring more than once, given those conditions. If there are a bunch of supernatural things (souls) and the natural world grew up around them, that would satisfy every assumption of the Kalam. And I would even argue, if there are a great many supernatural things, simplicity would say they were all equal. One creating the others is an extra process.

It's also a little naive. Imagine being an embryo in a womb, which is all you know, and wondering why there is only one womb, and only one of you. Wow, you must be special. The idea that there are things outside our understanding is already necessary for God, so if we're to believe in God, we must get rid of the naive universe altogether.

I disagree. I think this “mystery” card is taken too much to the extreme here. Yes, we don’t know everything about the world. That doesn’t mean we can’t trust anything. We still have logical reasons for narrowing the scope of what the mystery could overturn in our knowledge and that mystery can’t go against logic. You said you don’t think 100% certainty is the goal, but that’s the only system this mystery point has any effect in.

But we can't know, we have no way to know, that there aren't other universes or realities that do not interact with ours. It's like being the embryo, knowing about your mother, and saying there must be only one. Throwing up our hands and saying we can't know anything for sure is different than assuming positively that there are not things that exist, that we do not know about. And anyone who believes in God has already taken the side of things existing which are inaccessible to our direct perception.

Sure, but there is other evidence to consider. Reasoning doesn’t lead us toward each of our souls creating our own matter/energy (for instance, as you’ve said, our matter is a transformation of matter already present), while it does lead us to positing a soul-like cause of the natural universe. A theory that is just as likely via one Soul versus multiple Souls.

But it's a extra complexity to assume one soul is different, and created the rest, than to say they're all the same.

So why assume one implies the other? I’m not assuming that or even positing that. As to whether God might have started to exist, that’s logically impossible. Not because I’m special pleading for God, but because before we brought in the ‘God’ label, the argument leads us to a being that must be uncaused and eternal (in the has always existed, no beginning sense). This cause cannot have started to exist.

Uncaused might as easily mean it popped into being as that it was already in being.

Not by default, no, but if you're already believing in souls, there's absolutely no reason why not.

Again, it’s not about logical possibility. That’s the “no reason why not”. You need to offer a “reason why to”.

I think it's equally simple. There is already a why to for your scenario. I'm borrowing it. It applies just as much to my scenario.

Besides, we forget things. We sometimes then remember what we forgot. No new processes or assumptions are added in the theory that if we have souls at all, they might have separate memories. Nothing new is assumed to be possible that we don't already know is possible. Assuming we can fully access our souls, when we can't even fully access what happened to us on our 4th birthdays, is probably the greater assumption.

Forgetting and remembering isn’t what “your” theory is positing. It’s positing that almost everyone forgets and never remembers that, although it forgets and remembers various things since then. This is an added assumption that is pure speculation, no positive evidence offered for it.

I'm not quite saying that that absolutely happens. I'm saying it might happen. And no, it's not that different than that very very few of us remember what happens on our 4th birthdays. No extra process. This is just how memory works. We can't access everything and there are some things nobody, or almost nobody, has access to, like being born.

But you defined ‘supernatural’ as known and not currently explained by natural laws. You need a term for known and unexplainable by natural laws.

I defined supernatural as unexplainable by our current understanding of natural laws. So something might be known and supernatural (reincarnation if you think there's enough evidence for it), known and natural (mundane, like rain falling), unknown and supernatural (people might have psychic powers but nobody has proven it), or unknown and natural (like how another planet's ecosystem might work if we extend natural law, but we don't know yet that any ecosystem does work that way).

[alexxcJRO]

No, throughout history people did see these as literary devices. I quoted some of them.

Dear Cthulhu I would fare better arguing with walls.

The Tanager:"My claim was that some people in the Judeo-Christian tradition don’t read many parts of Genesis literally", "But I wasn’t claiming all of those stories should be taken non-literally, either.", "Second, I didn’t claim Origen didn’t believe Adam and Eve were actual people."

Initially some parts of a story(Adam and Eve story) were metaphor. Then a whole story(Adam and Eve) story became metaphorical. Then multiple stories(Adam and Eve + Noah story, Tower of Babylon). And so on. The pattern is clear as day.

At first they missed these literary devices, this literary style. As soon as the epidemic starts the discovery of these literary devices, this literary style cover only over some parts of Genesis story. With times the process of finding of these literary devices, this literary style spread like a virus culminating today with entire stories: Adam and Eve story, Noah story, Tower of Babylon and so on being infected with these supposed literary devices, this literary style.

It clear as day a dishonest mechanism of cherry-picking and metaphorical metamorphosis in order to save a failed hypothesis.
There is no objective literary analysis of the text. It about preserving cherished beliefs.

I think the phrase “begins to exist” would just mean something different if B-theory is true. It would mean that, say an elephant, is only partially extended within the time block, not fully extended.

Did you miss:"Craig for example insists upon the A-theory as a necessary part of the kalam cosmological argument.
According to Craig KALAM “presupposes from start to finish an A-theory of time.”

Craig wrote:
"[S]ome of the arguments for the finitude of the past seem to presuppose that temporal becoming [as described by the A-Theory] is real. For example, the argument I shared earlier tonight, about how you get through an infinite series of events by going one event at a time -- that presupposes that these events are actually happening, that they're actually lapsing.

But, you see, on the B-Theory, that idea of a temporal lapse of time is an illusion. The whole yard stick just exists and nobody is moving from the first inch to the last inch. It just is there. So it seems to me the A-Theory does underly the kalam argument in several ways."

There are two philosophical arguments given. I agree they would fail if B theory is true. Why do you think B theory is more reasonably true than A-theory?

1.
It's irrelevant sir.
It provides food for my argument: using God to satisfy ignorance->putting God in gaps of knowledge to solve supposed "problems".


2.
But if your curious:
"B-theory in theoretical physics[edit]
The B-theory of time has received support from physicists.[17][18] This is likely due to its compatibility with physics and the fact that many theories such as special relativity, the ADD model, and brane cosmology, point to a theory of time similar to B-theory.
In special relativity, the relativity of simultaneity shows that there is no unique present, and that each point in the universe can have a different set of events that are in its present moment.
Many of special relativity's now-proven counterintuitive predictions, such as length contraction and time dilation, are a result of this. Relativity of simultaneity is often taken to imply eternalism (and hence a B-theory of time), where the present for different observers is a time slice of the four-dimensional universe. This is demonstrated in the Rietdijk–Putnam argument and in Roger Penrose's advanced form of this argument, the Andromeda paradox.[19]
It is therefore common (though not universal) for B-theorists to be four-dimensionalists, that is, to believe that objects are extended in time as well as in space and therefore have temporal as well as spatial parts. This is sometimes called a time-slice ontology."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-theory_of_time

3.
KALAM is nonsense. Has been debunked many times.
I have only argued 2 problems. There are more:

KALAM:
P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C. Therefore the universe has a cause.

A: False premise/ uncertainty of being true

Freedom of will necessitate having some uncaused elements/components to it. (humans are free in the sense that they are autonomously able to make decisions that are not caused by anything)
P1. Free will acts by definition are uncaused.
P2. Conform Christian beliefs free will acts exists.
C. They are things(free will acts) that begin to exist that do not have a cause to their existence

P1. If P1(KALAM) is true then nothing that begins to exits has no cause for its existence
P2. They are things(free will acts) that begin to exist that do not have a cause to their existence
C. P1 is false.
Observation1: There is some uncertainty to whether the radioactive decay of an atom or virtual particles have any causes for their beginning. They may be exceptions. (gives support to the uncertainty of P1 being true)
Observation2: One would need to be omniscient to claim "Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence".



B. Equivocation

"Equivocation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Equivocation (disambiguation).
In logic, equivocation ('calling two different things by the same name') is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

P1. Equivocation is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument.
P2. The KALAM argument use same word-cause with multiple senses “cause1” and “cause2” within the argument.
C. Therefore KALAM makes the logical fallacy called equivocation
*cause 1: recombination of pre-existing objects-things, entities and properties=material cause
*cause 2: divine creation ex nihilo=efficient cause


C:
“The fallacy of composition is an informal fallacy that arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. A trivial example might be: "This tire is made of rubber, therefore the vehicle of which it is a part is also made of rubber." This is fallacious, because vehicles are made with a variety of parts, most of which are not made of rubber.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

If things inside the universe(multiverse or cacaverse or ... or omniverse) begin to exist or have a cause for their existence does not mean the universe(multiverse or cacaverse or ... omniverse) itself began to exists or have a cause for it's existence.
The fabric of Space-Time is probably finite and necessarily has a beginning state of minimum entropy(Singularity) and possibly an end state of maximum entropy(Heat Death).
The fabric of Space-time may be just a thing, a part inside the universe(multiverse or whatever) and not the whole thing.


D. The fallacy of single cause.

The fallacy of the single cause, also known as complex cause, causal oversimplification, causal reductionism, and reduction fallacy,[1] is an informal fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

P1. The fallacy of the single cause is an informal fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.
P2 The KALAM argument assumes there is a single, simple cause of an outcome(creation of the universe).
C. Therefore KALAM makes the logical fallacy called fallacy of the single cause
Observation: In reality the universe may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.(multiple supernatural gods or multiple extremely powerful multi-dimensional aliens beings or multiple natural causes or explanation4 or explantion5 or …ad infinitum).

That’s not a good analogy of what I am asking you about. Analogically, you aren’t accused of murder. The state actually thinks you have been an outstanding model citizen. But they want to harm you anyway because they gain some perceived benefit. Why are they wrong in that case?

Did you not said: "He’s not punishing the mentally impaired individual, he thinks that individual is innocent and hasn't done anything to deserve the harm, it's just that harming that individual will benefit Pete and that's why he does it."
I was going with your logic.
You are arguing with you. So funny!

[boatsnguitars]

Yes, the burden is on me to give the reason(s) I’m not an agnostic on that issue.

BTW, HMGOMs are invisible and communicate with a select 144,000 people on Earth.

Now you're thinking, "Oh, no! He's got me! I can't say I disbelieve because that's like my claim for God, but I can't say I believe in them because it's just silly... Is my belief in God likewise silly?"

[The Tanager]

The Kalam is the argument that posits that things - everything - has a marked beginning. It's the thing conflating changes (which often cause other changes) with beginnings. I'm not doing that. I'm just working with the Kalam's assumptions because that's what's fair. First the Kalam says, we have to go on what we can see. We see that things (here is the conflation, because it really means changes, where it later sidles in the idea that things exist at all) have causes, so if you roll it back far enough, and we assume that nothing comes from nothing, and that it's not just infinite causes, there must have been a First Cause. You don't get this without the assumed premise that we have to go on what we can see. And that doesn't get us to what might happen in a true vacuum because we've never seen that. Once we say, we're going on what we can see, yes the idea that there is a First Cause if it's not causes all the way down to infinity, is valid. But we also have to accept that we don't know what happens in nothingness because we haven't seen nothingness.

I don’t see how it’s wrong to say that when a sperm combines with an egg that a new human begins to exist. Yes, it is a change of previously existing material, but it’s still a beginning to an existence, which is the thing we are talking about. All of our experiences of beginnings point to causes.

Yes, it is logically possible that beginnings that aren’t changes of pre-existing material act differently, but we aren’t just talking about logical possibilities. I think it is more reasonable to believe that those kinds of beginnings follow what we have observed about other kinds of beginnings, then that they act completely differently. To reasonably think otherwise there would need to be some positive difference we could point to that could account for that, but we are talking about nothingness. There are no positive properties at all. We haven’t seen nothingness because nothingness isn’t a thing to be seen. But even assuming that, why doesn’t it still happen? Why did it happen once, but no more? Why doesn’t matter continue to pop into existence from nothing? Why doesn’t matter change uncaused?

Then this non-supernatural universe is just an arbitrary definitional line, too. If we have souls in us and they interact with us, you're not saying anything about what happens in reality, you're just talking about what you call different parts of reality.

It’s not arbitrary; we are delineating the natural and non-natural because those are different things. I don’t understand the bit about “not saying anything about what happens in reality”. I’m not sure what you are getting at there.

I didn't say there was anything wrong with the process. I agree that you might as well label this powerful First Cause, God. I disagree with the idea that it has to be a separate entity.

A separate entity from what? From the caused natural universe?

Sure there is: That's if popping into being is something that can only happen in total nothingness. We don't know what does, or does not, happen in nothingness.

Nothingness isn’t a thing where anything can happen; it’s an absence. It is impossible for it to have a property or constraint, which would be needed to limit it to only happening that once.

Besides, you are a sentient being. And you don't know about God's motives. So compare things you have done multiple times with things you have only done once. You have done many things, many times. You have done something once, and only once, that you know you will not do again, very sparingly. There's every motive for your particular God to blow up the universe and start again. And that's the thing: He might have. If he'll drown us all and start again with Noah, how can we know he didn't drown the natural world and make another Adam? We don't know that.

But there are logical constraints or positive properties that one can point to that explain why that thing will only happen once. Nothingness isn’t a thing to have such properties or constraints. While a personal agent has free will to point to to explain why it’s not just creating matter “from nothing” all the time.

We don't know there aren't many pocket universes right now, that simply don't interact with one another.

Speculating that it could happen multiple times isn’t a reasonable reason to conclude it does happen multiple times. And even if it does happen multiple times, but only in these pocket ways, you still have the problem of nothingness having no possible properties or constraints.

I'm pretty sure they're talking about stars moving apart from one another. But the fact remains, if emptiness can't be made, but it is natural and not supernatural, you have to categorise it according to your definition as either natural or supernatural, just like we have to call 0 a number. Empty sets aren't logically null just because they have no properties. They must fit somewhere. If emptiness is natural, then God did not make everything natural, even if it's because emptiness can't be made. For your argument to work, you'd have to categorise emptiness as supernatural. And then, things might arise from it unbidden.

Emptiness isn’t a thing at all, it’s an absence, a no-thing. The categories of natural and supernatural are for things.

So then, maybe God had a beginning. Maybe the Christian God literally exists, but he's not the First Cause. Some other thing is. Or maybe the First Cause actually popped into being. Supernatural things might easily do so. The idea of it always having been there is suspect, if we're not saying eternal means no beginning.

I was saying we need to be clear on what sense of ‘eternal’ is being used when. In the Kalam, we conclude that there is a beginningless-kind-of-eternal, uncaused, first cause, (etc.). Yes, the Kalam doesn’t show this is the Christian God (I didn’t argue for that), but it’s not something that pops into being. Supernatural things aren’t excluded from the reasoning of things beginning to exist needing a cause.

I don't think reason does say things can't pop into being, but the Kalam says things don't pop into being. I don't have a problem with things popping into being.

Popping into being uncaused and creation from nothing are two different things. With the latter, there is an efficient cause, but not a material one; while in the first there is neither of those.

A good answer to why they don't do that now, is that the bucket is already full, so it can't get more water in it than is already there. Maybe in terms of life, the universe, and everything, empty buckets do spawn water. We don't know, because we've never seen an empty bucket.

Why should we think the bucket is full? I get that it’s logically possible, but we need to talk about what is most reasonable to believe. Your analogy also assumes there is a bucket and there could conceivably be some property the bucket has that causes it to be filled, but with emptiness there are no properties or constraints that would lead to explaining that.

Why? Why can't reality itself be the brute fact?

Do you mean the material universe by ‘reality’? If so, the reasoning in the Kalam.

Simplicity does not necessarily favour something happening only once, and as you point out, if something could occur "naturally" (in this case meaning, from nothing) we would need a reason that it did happen only once. Simplicity would favour something that could occur in given conditions, occurring more than once, given those conditions.

I’m not saying simplicity favors things happening once; simplicity is about fewer unexplained assumptions. I agree that simplicity would favor something occurring in given conditions more than once, given multiple occasions of those conditions. That is actually a strike against nothingness giving rise to something uncaused because the concept of nothingness is always present. Even in the presence of matter, this ‘nothingness’ is still ‘there’ and, if it gives rise to matter popping into existence, should continue to so.

If there are a bunch of supernatural things (souls) and the natural world grew up around them, that would satisfy every assumption of the Kalam. And I would even argue, if there are a great many supernatural things, simplicity would say they were all equal. One creating the others is an extra process.

I don’t think it satisfies Kalam. We don’t have evidence that our souls are beginningless, for example.

But we can't know, we have no way to know, that there aren't other universes or realities that do not interact with ours. It's like being the embryo, knowing about your mother, and saying there must be only one. Throwing up our hands and saying we can't know anything for sure is different than assuming positively that there are not things that exist, that we do not know about. And anyone who believes in God has already taken the side of things existing which are inaccessible to our direct perception.

You still seem to be arguing that we don’t have 100% certainty here, so we can’t choose a belief here about these issues. The theist here isn’t arguing for God in this way. I think I’m missing your point.

But it's a extra complexity to assume one soul is different, and created the rest, than to say they're all the same.

But it’s not an assumption, it’s via an argument that there is a First Cause and, at that point, to explain that argument, one first cause creating matter is simpler than multiple souls each creating bits of that matter, but it all works together under one rule in spite of the different souls and then these souls wrap specific matter around themselves at different points in time and anything else that would be a part of that speculation.

Uncaused might as easily mean it popped into being as that it was already in being.

Only if we had good reason to believe something can come from nothing uncaused and we don’t.

I think it's equally simple. There is already a why to for your scenario. I'm borrowing it. It applies just as much to my scenario.

What are you borrowing from my scenario to get that our beginningless souls have lost-memories?

I'm not quite saying that that absolutely happens. I'm saying it might happen. And no, it's not that different than that very very few of us remember what happens on our 4th birthdays. No extra process. This is just how memory works. We can't access everything and there are some things nobody, or almost nobody, has access to, like being born.

We are talking about reasonable positions (if not the most reasonable), not just logical possibilities. And, yes, it’s different than how we can’t remember what happened on our 4th birthdays. There is plenty of evidence that we still existed on our 4th birthday; while there is no evidence that our souls pre-existed our physical births.

I defined supernatural as unexplainable by our current understanding of natural laws. So something might be known and supernatural (reincarnation if you think there's enough evidence for it), known and natural (mundane, like rain falling), unknown and supernatural (people might have psychic powers but nobody has proven it), or unknown and natural (like how another planet's ecosystem might work if we extend natural law, but we don't know yet that any ecosystem does work that way).

Category 1 was that it “can’t be explained with only the natural laws we know now.” That seems different to me than saying not only can’t it be currently explained by natural laws, but there is no chance it ever could be explained by natural laws. The problem I see here is it defines supernatural epistemologically rather than ontologically, while ‘natural’ is an ontological category.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to William in post #170]

I understand matter to be the ‘stuff’ and energy as a property that ‘stuff’ has, but I’ve heard of energy used in a ‘stuff’ sort of way. I think everything that follows is still the same, either way.

[The Tanager]

1.
It's irrelevant sir.
It provides food for my argument: using God to satisfy ignorance->putting God in gaps of knowledge to solve supposed "problems".

Just because there are different theories of time doesn’t mean we are ignorant about the nature of time. B-theory has to be more than just a logical possibility to rationally turn someone away from the Kalam; otherwise it is an irrational attempt to solve a problem (I don’t want to believe the conclusion and this gives me an out, so I’m taking it with no support for doing so).

2.
But if your curious:
"B-theory in theoretical physics[edit]
The B-theory of time has received support from physicists.[17][18] This is likely due to its compatibility with physics and the fact that many theories such as special relativity, the ADD model, and brane cosmology, point to a theory of time similar to B-theory.
In special relativity, the relativity of simultaneity shows that there is no unique present, and that each point in the universe can have a different set of events that are in its present moment.
Many of special relativity's now-proven counterintuitive predictions, such as length contraction and time dilation, are a result of this. Relativity of simultaneity is often taken to imply eternalism (and hence a B-theory of time), where the present for different observers is a time slice of the four-dimensional universe. This is demonstrated in the Rietdijk–Putnam argument and in Roger Penrose's advanced form of this argument, the Andromeda paradox.[19]
It is therefore common (though not universal) for B-theorists to be four-dimensionalists, that is, to believe that objects are extended in time as well as in space and therefore have temporal as well as spatial parts. This is sometimes called a time-slice ontology."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-theory_of_time

The Minkowskian view of special relativity necessitates B-theory, but not Einstein’s original formulation, and a neo-Lorentzian relativity theory and Newtonian space-time theories, so this seems to conflate absolute time with the A-theory of time. Why do you believe the Minkowskian view, when it is empirically equivalent to Einstein’s and the neo-Lorentzian views?

3.
KALAM is nonsense. Has been debunked many times.
I have only argued 2 problems. There are more:

KALAM:
P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C. Therefore the universe has a cause.

A: False premise/ uncertainty of being true

Freedom of will necessitate having some uncaused elements/components to it. (humans are free in the sense that they are autonomously able to make decisions that are not caused by anything)

P1. Free will acts by definition are uncaused.
P2. Conform Christian beliefs free will acts exists.
C. They are things(free will acts) that begin to exist that do not have a cause to their existence

Those decisions aren’t uncaused; they are caused by the human will, so premise 1 is false, negating the rest of your case there.

Observation1: There is some uncertainty to whether the radioactive decay of an atom or virtual particles have any causes for their beginning. They may be exceptions. (gives support to the uncertainty of P1 being true)

Efficient causation is uncertain, but there is still the material cause of the atom or virtual particles, that have some kind of conditions being met for the decay to happen.

Observation2: One would need to be omniscient to claim "Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence".

You have to be omniscient to claim anything is the absolute truth (beyond pure math and definitions), but 100% certainty shouldn’t be the standard. You don’t have to be omniscient for this premise to be the most reasonable position to take.

B. Equivocation

"Equivocation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Equivocation (disambiguation).
In logic, equivocation ('calling two different things by the same name') is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

P1. Equivocation is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument.
P2. The KALAM argument use same word-cause with multiple senses “cause1” and “cause2” within the argument.
C. Therefore KALAM makes the logical fallacy called equivocation
*cause 1: recombination of pre-existing objects-things, entities and properties=material cause
*cause 2: divine creation ex nihilo=efficient cause

No, the Kalam uses ‘cause’ to cover both senses consistently.

C:
“The fallacy of composition is an informal fallacy that arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. A trivial example might be: "This tire is made of rubber, therefore the vehicle of which it is a part is also made of rubber." This is fallacious, because vehicles are made with a variety of parts, most of which are not made of rubber.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

If things inside the universe(multiverse or cacaverse or ... or omniverse) begin to exist or have a cause for their existence does not mean the universe(multiverse or cacaverse or ... omniverse) itself began to exists or have a cause for it's existence.
The fabric of Space-Time is probably finite and necessarily has a beginning state of minimum entropy(Singularity) and possibly an end state of maximum entropy(Heat Death).
The fabric of Space-time may be just a thing, a part inside the universe(multiverse or whatever) and not the whole thing.

The universe isn’t a thing that houses all of the material stuff, but is the collection of all material stuff, including any “fabric”.

D. The fallacy of single cause.

The fallacy of the single cause, also known as complex cause, causal oversimplification, causal reductionism, and reduction fallacy,[1] is an informal fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

P1. The fallacy of the single cause is an informal fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.
P2 The KALAM argument assumes there is a single, simple cause of an outcome(creation of the universe).
C. Therefore KALAM makes the logical fallacy called fallacy of the single cause
Observation: In reality the universe may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.(multiple supernatural gods or multiple extremely powerful multi-dimensional aliens beings or multiple natural causes or explanation4 or explantion5 or …ad infinitum).

Appealing to the simplicity of one over multiple causes is not a fallacy; science appeals to simplicity in all sorts of ways.

Did you not said: "He’s not punishing the mentally impaired individual, he thinks that individual is innocent and hasn't done anything to deserve the harm, it's just that harming that individual will benefit Pete and that's why he does it."
I was going with your logic.
You are arguing with you. So funny!

No, your analogy had the state punishing you for being guilty of murder. That wasn’t my logic. My logic would be the state harming you even though it thinks you are innocent of the murder. So, why would the state be wrong to do that?

[The Tanager]

BTW, HMGOMs are invisible and communicate with a select 144,000 people on Earth.

Now you're thinking, "Oh, no! He's got me! I can't say I disbelieve because that's like my claim for God, but I can't say I believe in them because it's just silly... Is my belief in God likewise silly?"

No, I disbelieve HMGOMs because there is only an unsupported claim being given; that’s not the same with my claim for God via the Kalam and not enough to rationally believe something.

[boatsnguitars]

BTW, HMGOMs are invisible and communicate with a select 144,000 people on Earth.

Now you're thinking, "Oh, no! He's got me! I can't say I disbelieve because that's like my claim for God, but I can't say I believe in them because it's just silly... Is my belief in God likewise silly?"

No, I disbelieve HMGOMs because there is only an unsupported claim being given; that’s not the same with my claim for God via the Kalam and not enough to rationally believe something.

The number of unsupported claims seems to be irrelevant, no? A million unsupported claims is still unsupported.

But, you are getting the picture. You don't feel the need to support your claim that HMGOMs don't exist because it's just not worth the energy. Agnosticism isn't the default.

Likewise, God.

[William]

Okay. Perhaps we are making progress moving toward an agreement.

Clarification required. What do you mean by "energy/matter" and do we treat these as the same thing, or different things?

I think the classic definition of matter is a substance that occupies physical space and has mass. Energy is defined as the ability to do work. Together, matter and energy are often viewed as the basis of all objective physical phenomena we observe in the real world. I'm saying energy/matter to try to include all the physical 'stuff'.

I cannot tell by the definition you provided, whether these should be treated as different or same.

For now, how shall we agree to treat energy/matter as of the same (source) or of different sources, perhaps exploring each presentation...

[Replying to William in post #170]

I understand matter to be the ‘stuff’ and energy as a property that ‘stuff’ has, but I’ve heard of energy used in a ‘stuff’ sort of way. I think everything that follows is still the same, either way.

"Everything that follows" isn't what we are trying to agree on. Which of the two are you arguing for.
1. Matter is stuff, and energy is a property of that stuff.
2. Matter and energy are stuff.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to boatsnguitars in post #178]

No, I’m not agreeing with your picture. I did support my claim that one is not reasonable to believe in HMGOMs because it’s not reasonable to believe something simply because there is an unsupported claim that it is true.