Greetings All:

I have watched and read with keen interest the several discussions on this resurrection vs reincarnation topic. While they are doubtlessly riveting, I think they are now bordering on repetitive monotony ( I don’t know if anyone else feels this way).

Is it possible to recommend that if the Christians debating this and other points of Christian doctrine have reached a stalemate in this and several other threads—that they agree to disagree and move on? I say this specifically because I wonder if the teaching on resurrection or reincarnation is cardinal to the Christian faith. Is this one of those teachings whereby if one does not have the correct view, one is then deemed to be heretical and thus robbed of the basic salvational grace inherent in Christianity?

I am persuaded that this present debate is not as fundamental to the basic Christian faith as say discussions on the Doctrine of God, or Doctrine of the Trinity, or Doctrine of Christ, or the accurate biblical Doctrine on Man, or the real Christian Doctrine on Salvation, and perhaps the Christian Doctrine on Revelations—these being doctrines that Christians must have at least as similar and as basic a view on to be minimally considered Christians and to merit heaven despite other peripheral doctrinal differences.

I want to make an earnest plea to the Christians in these discussions to consider the strong option of agreeing to disagree ultimately—the hope being that in the end some of these present disagreements may be explained and resolved fully. Let it not be a wedge to divide Christians and thus make a mockery of Christianity.

Now, I have to say that I am NOT convinced that the bible (or specifically the Christian faith) teaches any such thing as re-incarnation. Unfortunately, as I have come to discover in the threads where reincarnation is argued, I find that the word is given different meanings and crafted in such a manner that one may look casually at things and affect to see verses that would bolster that idea. Now one may argue that persons who have managed to see reincarnation in the bible have explicitly misunderstood the necessary verses or that they have a rather unique and possibly inconsistent idea of what reincarnation truly is (as held by majority of people who espouse the idea), but that’s not to say however that there are not shades of meaning in the various texts which are sufficiently cryptic or symbolic as to warrant these exegeses that some of you have nobly embarked upon.

I am not however going to go into such fanciful details primarily because I am not persuaded of their immediate relevance in a discussion board not specifically devoted to Christianity and Christian teachings—but rather crowded with all manner of people: theists (non-Christian theists), atheists or otherwise—who perhaps are only too glad to watch a comedy of horrors as supposedly Christian brethren rip themselves to bits, with acrid language no less, on decidedly peripheral points of doctrine. Perhaps this underscores the necessity of a dedicated Christian subforum?

Of course there are boatloads of other philosophical and theological discussions to be had here if one really has the stomach for these protracted discussions. At any rate, and not to put a dampener on things, one would really hope that these discussions shed more light than heat. And if it turns out that an impasse is reached, it is hoped that discussants would at least have the presence of mind to agree to disagree and thus move on.

Cheers.

Oh dear, I forgot about this thread.

I have been very busy lately, but I'll be coming back later to revisit the discussions in this thread.

"Do You Realize That We Don't Really Exist?"

Now, who or what is the non-existence  asking this question, and t[i]o what non-existence are these questions posed[/i]? That this question can be asked at all, and that anyone might even begin to frame an answer, no matter how irrational, is to PRESUPPOSE that we actually do in fact exist!

I'll be returning later to fully examine the rest of the thread for what useful information or enlightenment I might gain out of this. Otherwise, it seems to me that this whole question rests on epistemologically (philosophically) absurd presuppositions.

Carry on, ladies and gentlemen,

Hey Deep Sight:

Happy New Year to you and yours.

I am not exactly sure what one means by "reasonless" intelligence. Is the term "reasonless intelligence" to be understood as "purposeless intelligence"-- or rather the oxymoron "unreasoning/thoughtless/irrational intelligence"?

Thanks.

Hey Rossike, nice to hear from you again.

You will never find on a forum thread enough material to invoke such a huge change in your worldview. You will need to buy and read BOOKS, of which I have suggested a few so far.

I could suggest a few more if u so wish. There's so much more to this than the brief summaries you've read here.

Thanks….we’ll explore these concepts together.

Actually you're wrong here. There is a HUGE distinction between Consciousness and the Mind.

The Mind only exists in a human being. The mind is Consciousness 'degraded' to working within a dense 'physical' realm, allied to a human brain.

When the body dies, the Mind is recalibrated to its Higher Consciousness

The word consciousness is difficult to define and we humans don’t quite know a lot about it. Besides, people have various understandings of that word. Having said that, I don’t think there is a huge difference between the mind and consciousness. Both terms are close enough as to be synonymous. Nevertheless, if I am pressed for a distinction between the two, I would say that t[b]he mind produces consciousness[/b]. When people speak about Consciousness they are invariably referring to mental phenomena or the MIND. It doesn’t even matter if they speak poetically or figuratively about some[i] Higher or Supreme Consciousness[/i] – they are speaking properly about a MIND.

On the basis of this view, the human mind does not represent ‘degraded’ consciousness tied down, as you may be wont to assert to some dense physical realm. The reasons are very obvious: Consciousness or the mind is nothing empirically tangible or susceptible to material forces of degradation. You may disfigure or irreparably damage the physical human brain however. Such an action will make it difficult or impossible for the MIND’s mental processes to continue and be detected physically. This is what losing one’s consciousness means. At no time however is the consciousness degraded as it were.

My research indicates that each of us has a Higher Consciousness, a default state of Awareness which constitutes our Real Self.

When we ''die'', our mind recalibrates to our Real Aware Self. This Higher Self is in effect the real ''us''. It retains all our soul experiences, including 'memories' of all our 'past' incarnations as humans and/or other beings.

This view is mistaken. The mind is the SELF. What you call “Real Aware Self” is properly and exactly what the mind is. It is what retains our experiences and memories. There is no special recalibration going on at any point. At death, what happens is that the mind/consciousness/soul is separated from the physical material body. 

The relevant analogy is that a radio sitting on your table functions as a radio ONLY as long as it is able to receive radio wave signals coming to it. When the radio becomes permanently dysfunctional, it fails to pick up the radio wave and thus cannot function anymore as a radio. The radio frequency remains unaltered; it does not recalibrate into some other radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum. Likewise, permanent damage to the human brain would result in the inability to filter through and express the mental activity of  the conscious mind. At death, or a permanent cessation of brain activity, the mind is merely separated from its material body. It is not transformed into anything different.

We are NOT our human bodies. Consciousness does not require a 'body' to exist.

We are not merely our human bodies. That is the way to say it. Of course philosophically speaking, consciousness or the MIND does not require a body to exist and I agree with you there. A strict naturalist will disagree with us both at this point because he or she will be convinced, with good reasons, that one couldn’t show that there is any ‘bodiless’ consciousness around.

It only 'acquires a body' in order to interract effectively with other participatory souls in a 3 dimensional DVD film show called ''life on earth''.

Once its role in the film is done by way of ''death'', Consciousness 'leaves the body' and returns to its Real, aware Self.

You seem to be throwing terms around indiscriminately. The mind is the same as the soul. It is the same as the self [/i]and it is the same as [i]consciousness. It could just be differences in worldview here. The human mind/consciousness is not said to be existing merrily in some indiscernible plane from which it plucks a body at will in order to interact with other souls which have doubtlessly acquired bodies of their own; all of which is arranged to play out in some 3D film. I appreciate the imagery, but it is a bit too simplistic if you ask me.

The asserter does not need to ''step out of his sensory data framework'' to assert that all appearance of physicality is illusion. You do not have to personally travel around the world to know the earth is a sphere. You reference the work of other sources who have done the research, or discovered the earth's spherical nature long before you. With regard to the holographic universe, there is a plethora of submissions from all facets of humanity and from all epochs,  affirming the validity of the concept.

This is a false comparison. When you assert that all physicality is illusion, someone else can stake out a position diametrically opposed to yours. You relied on your sense-data to make that call, and another fully functional person relied on his or her sense-data to reach a conflicting conclusion. The problem this presents to us is a question of how anyone can prove the veridicality of sense-data. By what objective, extra-personal standards can we assess and judge the validity of our own individual perceptual framework? On what grounds can I trust the impressions of my sense-data? Also, on what grounds can I dismiss another person’s sense data?

The reason your counter example is fallacious is simple. I may be lazy for instance and accept, on authority, that the earth is a sphere. Be that as it may, if I were to doubt it, I would need to investigate the claim for myself. To do this however, there is an objective, independent, unbiased idea of what a sphere is (a basis for which anyone could investigate and come away not pronouncing the earth to be rhomboid, trapezoidal, triangular or otherwise). If there is no definite , extra-personal, non-subjective  anchor point, I am not obliged to agree with anyone who decrees that the earth is a sphere. I could investigate, get the same experimental results, get amazing picture photographs of the earth from space, but since there is no agreement on a standard, I could just as well decide that the earth is cuboidal. Why should your subjective call on anything be believed  by any mind other than your own? What independent basis separate from your own senses can we call upon to validate or invalidate any sensory perception?

A lot of these concerns are best resolved by reading a good book or two on the subject - WITH AN OPEN MIND. In  addition to Michael Talbot's Holographic Universe, I would also suggest the work of astrophysicist Giuliana Conforto who wrote Organic Universe,and who stated therein,

''we have to remember that the luminous matter we observe with our instruments is only 0.5% of all calculated mass. What we see with our eyes is still less. ''Reality'' is a thin ''film'' of light, a visible matrix our biological body or robot can interract with; such a body is just a ''costume'' that lets us participate in the ''film'' itself for a while; it is not our true identity or ''I''.

Giuliana Conforto Organic Universe (Edizioni Noesis, Italy 2004)

I think you may want to expand on this holographic universe idea as you understand it so that anyone may follow your train of thoughts. It is quite possible to be hooked on particular quotes in a book and miss the overall message in the book. From what you have quoted, it is already apparent to me that you may be drawing conclusions different from what the author is reaching. The author may have wanted to describe the finite and perhaps limited scope of our current general understanding of what physical reality is. Indeed one may have to read the book entirely to see if at any point the author denies the existence of the physical – which point you are indeed strenuously making or defending.

It's not a 'plea'. It is a statement of fact, which I'm astonished you fail to grasp.

FACT is if the ''building blocks'' of a supposedly physical object are found to contain overwhelmingly empty space (ie empty to our five senses), it stands to reason that the object viewed and felt as 'solid' is an optical and sensory illusion. It's a complete no-brainer. Just because it LOOKS solid and FEELS solid does not mean it really IS 'solid'. Visit www.holography.ru.

There you will see holographic objects created today which appear as full 3D carbon copies of their originals.

Also, cutting edge scientific research has shown clearly that all atoms are scattered and do not congegregate into discernible forms and shapes UNTIL and UNLESS THEY ARE OBSERVED.

Meaning by extension that nothing exists in solid form unless it is observed.

There are too many untidy assumptions bundled into this piece.

1)You are trying to establish is that there is nothing like the physical just in case you have forgotten. Remember that it is the physical that you have chosen to call an illusion. Therefore, like I said earlier, you may want to tell me what you understand an illusion to be.  If I am going to assume that by illusion, you mean that physical objects are merely imaginary, then you’ll have to tell me why I should take your subjective call as true since to me, physical objects are not in the least bit phantasmal. On what basis should I accept your claim?

2)You seem to be making the mistake of thinking that by showing how tiny the atoms and subatomic components of solid matter are, it somehow leads one to conclude that solid matter is illusory. This is a fallacy of composition and it is exactly the wrong approach. Your approach would have been better if someone wanted to contend that solid matter is one monolithic homogenous indivisible whole. Then you can rely on a good grasp of physics to show that even all matter is essentially quarks or energy or other quantum phenomena (or possibly strings depending on how comfortable you are with the string theory). That a bottle containing water is real and verifiable and can quench my thirst for instance is not torpedoed by establishing that water is made of 2 molecules of hydrogen for every molecule of oxygen. You are abandoning the object in consideration and merely toying with its constituents. This endeavor strikes me as a hopeless non-sequitur.

Erm, WE do not ''cause'' it to ''disappear''. It just DOES.

No—it doesn’t disappear in the sense that from somethingness one gets nothingness; it doesn’t disappear in the sense that what was once existing as a solid object ceases to exist in the physical universe. All you may get is a change in form as you seek to break down a large macroworld object like a huge lump of rock. With increasing sophistication, you may just be able to strip it down to its elementary particles. I can even grant that you may just be able to convert all mass to energy but that’s about all you can do. It has merely changed one physical form to another—and thus it never truly vanished.

Cheers.

In my spare time, I took a peek at the religion forum and this thread title immediately caught my eye. After reading the various contributions, I decided that the thread title must have just been intentionally constructed that way to lure people into the thread. If that was the aim, it was absolutely dead on. It is quite irresistible as a topic.

The problem I have with the view here is that it doesn’t quite explain satisfactorily how one should go about denying the all-too-obvious material component of human existence.

Just like the naturalist is inclined to view humans as merely or mostly matter, this thread starter wants to view humans as merely a mind. Both views seem to me to be incomplete and unnecessarily reductionist. A balanced view ought rightly to be that a human is a delicate blend of both - matter and mind. These two must always work together or we do not have a functional sentient human being in any proper meaning of the word.

So, are we simply the mental projections of some transcendental mind? Are we simply brains in a vat stimulated by electrodes manipulated by some ingenious mad scientist in some indescribable reality? Are we and by extension, every materially extended object, simply the hallucinations of individual observers? If one is to make that assertion, one needs to prove or demonstrate how this is true or to be believed. This is impossible to prove for essentially, it would require the asserter to step out of his sensory data framework to essentially establish the validity of his sense-data conclusions---and in addition show the invalidity of possibly contradictory sense-data information furnished to minds other than his own.

Just think about it—why should anyone proposing the idea that all humans are essentially ‘consciousness’ believe that idea himself? On what reliable external and non-subjective basis can he decide that his own sense-impressions about the external world are actually valid? He cannot merely assert that these are his subjective feelings on the issue. Why should he believe that his subjective assessment is valid? He might be mentally impaired; he might be hallucinating; he might have been manipulated by intelligences higher than his to imagine that his own consciousness actually reflects reality. How does he know that what he thinks he knows is what is actually to be known? And if there is no objective, extra-personal standard or basis upon which anyone can make this pronouncement, why should observers external to the asserter agree that it is an accurate reflection of the world as viewed or experienced by them?

This issue is not answered by pleading that solid objects can be split and further divided until it is reduced to atoms or even quarks. It is patently false to assume also we can keep dividing and reducing matter till at atomic or sub-atomic levels, we somehow magically cause the physical to ‘disappear’ into ‘empty space’. This merely betrays a misunderstanding of quantum realities especially when scientists flippantly allude to a void or to some nothingness (which is not really NOTHING).

I agree with the sentiment behind Deepsight's post.

However, I have a funny suspicious feeling that no discussions here (complaints or otherwise) will change the Admin's predetermined resolution.

There is no sense in having a separate Muslim subforum here, if the same consideration will not be given to Christianity. In a Muslim sub-forum, they have dedicated Muslim moderators who sanitize the board and rid that space of comments which they consider inflammatory or unnecessarily disruptive. If anyone wanted to participate there, and seek clarification on points of Islamic doctrines, then such a person must demonstrate an attitude devoid of bias and unwarranted hostility. If a person cannot commit himself to basic decency, he has no reason to whine when his concerns, questions or contributions are axed. He is left with the option of coming to the main discussion forum to engage. He might find like-minded people and have a discussion or he may not. It all depends on how interesting people judge his thread to be.

That same consideration should be given to Christianity. I am sure that moderators can be selected or appointed on a tenured basis to maintain an atmosphere of respect, civility and decorum in an exclusively Christian sub-forum. Anyone who felt like discussing Christian doctrine with Christians in a respectful intellectual atmosphere (devoid of the usual shrill insolent inflammatory rhetoric) will go there and interact. The moderators will reserve the right to axe posts that have been determined to be offensive on purpose (or from characters that have been determined to be vitriolic by design). Of course any person who feels that he was not given the proper treatment, or that his concerns and questions regarding Christian doctrines were not satisfactorily answered there can attempt to raise those concerns in the general religion forum.

What will this achieve?

---It will dispel the appearance of unfairness and anti-Christian bias in the main religion forum. Nigeria is roughly divided between Muslims and Christians. On close inspection, one discovers that the board is littered with tons of anti-Christian thread topics masquerading as attempts at having a rational discourse on Christian Doctrine. These threads (threads on Christian Doctrines or Orthodoxy) can effectively be dispatched to the Christian sub-forums by the moderators of the general Religion forum where Christians may feel free to engage such persons. If in the process of such an engagement, the Christians who participate there, in accord with their moderator/s determine an element of disingenuousness from such answers seekers, they will decide on what further actions to take.

--- it will allow the General Religion forum to be somewhat more focused. This move will have the effect of leaving the general forum for the more academic and philosophical aspects of these Religion discussions. Or for the lighthearted and sometimes, informative (as in news-related) discussions on Religion.

---this will eliminate tons of redundant threads that have been beaten to death already. Just think,  every few days, some newcomer to the board raises a topic on whether God exists or not. This is a topic that has been discussed ad nauseam. These newcomers can make their comments in any of the hundreds of related topics out there, don't you think?

---finally if this General Religion forum is sanitized by sending Islamic and Christian doctrinal discussions to their respective sub-fora, it will, as I have already hinted at before, focus religion discussions on the more academic, intellectual or perhaps philosophical. This will create a balanced atmosphere for atheists, skeptics and agnostics alike to participate in an atmosphere devoid of the tiresome Christian-Muslim battles on various doctrinal issues. Non-theists will therefore have a fuller sense of belonging in a general forum where it appears that no faith or non-faith is scapegoated; but where these issues are nevertheless discussed robustly.


If a Christian sub-forum cannot be created then, I see no grounds upon which to have a different Muslim sub-forum. If the argument is that Muslims often react violently to perceived slights of their faith, I'll have to suggest that this is a call that can be construed as patronizing. It stereotypes Muslims in suggesting that Muslims cannot rationally defend what they believe in. There may exist those types, but more than likely they'll not be contributing in a web-based discussion forum anyway. They can log off anytime they feel they've had more than they can contain. Besides, if we let that argument stand, then we'll have to consider that Christians can also feel victimized by constant assault on their faith. Whether they react as violently as Muslims or not does not change the fact.

This could be a reason why many theists do not waste their time engaging these issues on this board. It just seems like some love to revel in mockery and satire and true meaningful exchanges are lost.

What about suggestions to the effect that sub-forums will have to be created not just for Islam and Christianity but for other faiths as well as non-theists? This question does not arise. Majority of the people discussing here, if they are theists, will be either Christians or Muslims. Non-theists (or the few members of other faiths) will be comfortable discussing in a general forum rid of the noxious polarizing effect of the endless struggle between Muslims and Christians on this board.

There are many shades or categories of being/existence ie to say, that when we talk of things existing, there are different senses in which to understand that. There are things which exist because they possess matter; they are physical objects. They have concrete bodies or parts and as such can be seen, touched or felt. This is the most intuitive and common understanding of what it means when one says that a thing exists for they are all around us. So for example, one can say that cars, trees, rocks, water, air, planets, stars exist. This is an understanding that comes from a naturalistic examination of our world.

But why should we say that existence is limited to just the physical things that can be empirically manipulated? Not too many people live their actual daily lives on the presupposition that the only valid things existing are those things which are physical particulars or that have material form. Take some time and think about this point. Indeed the very thing that sets human beings apart as higher-functioning creatures on this earth is the human capacity to understand, process and utilize concepts which are not readily apparent from simple sense data.

In addition to physical objects which we can see, touch/feel, smell, taste or hear we have other reliable understandings of what it means for something to exist. Consider the notion of “Space and Time”. These entities (space and time) are what physical objects are extended into; physical object (matter) obtrudes into space-time; space and time exist even though one cannot literally see, touch/feel, hear, smell or taste them. In other words, you cannot isolate or investigate space and time in some test-tube or laboratory. They are not physically instantiated particulars/objects. Some lower life forms may never rationally comprehend the existence of space or time but their ignorance of that fact does not imply that space and time therefore do not exist.

Also think of the “Equator” or “the center of gravity of the solar system”. The equator has an attribute like a certain length; one can cross the equator but the equator is clearly NOT a physical object even though it exists in time and space. The same goes for the center of gravity of the solar system which is a point moving about in space. It is not a physical/material object either. It is an abstract spatiotemporal object for theoretically the center of gravity of the solar system is a moving point in space that you can momentarily enclose in a tiny container before it passes right through the container as it moves about.

Furthermore, consider this expression “Pete went to a judo match”. This statement makes sense to you, doesn’t it? I assume it does. In other words, if I make another equivalent statement like “Mary went to a dance rehearsal”, someone listening to me will not frown and declare that the statement is meaningless. But if we use a strict naturalistic sense in interpreting what exists, in both sentences the only substances we can empirically isolate are “Pete” in the first sentence and “Mary” in the second sentence. Those two objects have physical form. The rest of the sentence would then have to be described as a meaningless combination of words which do not exist because they can’t be empirically isolated. Would we be rationally justified in taking that stance? The answer is "No". What then do we call “went to a judo match” or “went to a dance rehearsal”? It would be very absurd, to suggest that “went to a judo match” or “went to a dance rehearsal” is a property of Pete or Mary in those sentences above. These are simply events.

Events are that which can occur, have occurred or are occurring in a present active sense. They have their own legitimate ontological existence. So for example, let us say that a certain John brushed his teeth this morning. This is an event that has already taken place—which is to say that the event has already occurred or existed. That is quite different from the active and present existing event right now as you read my post on your screen. What if someone comes out then and declares flatly that the event of John “brushing his teeth” cannot exist because the entire event is not a physical object? What if he denies the existence of that event because it lies in the past and is thus no longer capable of being presently witnessed? That is about as absurd as saying that the event “Pete went to a judo match” does not exist or is unreal because from the statement all we can materially grasp at is the physical form of Pete. Once again, an event is another example of existence that is non-material.

Events may involve finite particulars or matter which can be empirically investigated but taken as a whole, events are conceptually non-material. This means that an event as a subject is not composed of or structurally made out of matter. Think about this for a moment. Think about how impossible it will be for any person who purports to be a higher-functioning human being to live his or her life as though all events in the past did not really exist because such a person is committed to the view that only concrete material objects exist; Or how absurd it will be for such a person to doubt the existence of past events because he or she was not around to empirically validate these events. Do you see how such skepticism could lead one to simply assert that the earth is just 4 minutes old but with all appearances of age simply built in? Why? This is because such skepticism over the existence of the non-material (like events) will commit the skeptic to a fundamental disbelief in the rational existence of any past events outside one’s own immediate empirically verifiable personal experience.

Nevertheless we have other philosophical (metaphysical) and equally valid understanding of what it means for something to exist. These would include things like properties (size, color, weight etc), relations (being taller than, being sweeter than, being faster than, being greater or less than, being equal to etc), numbers or number sets (the set of all integers from negative infinity through zero to positive infinity), logic, propositions or mathematical proofs/theorems which are not concrete but abstract. These things have abstract existence unlike the way physical objects have concrete existence. This means that because these things exist in abstract form you could not possibly test them by empirical methods—which is to say that you cannot touch, taste, see, smell or hear them. They exist independent of any physical observer. In other words, these things exist whether or not there are human beings around to apprehend this abstract realm. But of course we do apprehend this abstract realm; and I’ll put it to you that no sane and higher-functioning human being lives his or her life as though the abstract does not exist.

On the issue of numbers, one is correct in a sense when one says that numbers can be used to express some understanding of the physical world. But that naïve view does not invalidate the idea that numbers themselves exist. Otherwise they cannot be employed in any meaningful way by humans who purport to make rational and logical sense of the world. By some of the arguments here, numbers will cease to exist if the only things existing in the world were simple-celled micro-organisms incapable of apprehending the existence of numbers. That idea is simply absurd. Aggregates, a collection of units or sum totals of quantities (or Numbers) exist whether there are sentient or intelligent life forms around to count. It merely redounds to our credit as intelligent humans that we can apprehend a realm of numbers and as such can count things or represent numbers pictorially or visually with numerals.

Just think about this: Did the number 4 simply begin to exist the first time some first intelligent human existing some distant time in the past looked around and counted out 4 objects? As you can see the answer is clearly “No”. There are many other examples to illustrate the point. No one thought up or invented numbers. Numbers are not the product of our creative imaginations or abilities. The correct view is that humans are relatively more advanced life-forms who can comprehend the realm of numbers and as such can invent or think up a visual representation for numbers as numerals and apply them in their day-to-day life.

Deep Sight:

I am sure that you had noble intentions when you typed your last response to me. But unless you’ve not been reading my discussions with Huxley, I see no reason why you would say some of the things you just said.

I have gone over this issue of the burden of proof at length with Huxley. If you have not read them, I think it would do you well to actually read them to see and understand what I have actually written.  Otherwise, I see no sense in trying to make out that you and I are necessarily in the same camp, or essentially saying the same things. For the avoidance of all doubt, the burden of proof cannot be shirked by the atheist here.

Therefore, I find it strange that you, as someone purporting to be arguing from a theist worldview, have said something that essentially reads like you’ve shot yourself in the foot. If you think that someone who confidently asserts that there is no God requires no justification for that assertion, then please exclude me from your company. I DO NOT HOLD THAT VIEW. I’ll let you shoulder the burden of advancing positions for which the hardened skeptic can sit around and shoot down all day long. I have no stomach for the sort of pointless discussions where hardened skeptics sit around and interrogate their opponent as it were, splitting hairs over words and meanings while offering no justification for their counter position if any.

As far as I am concerned, nothing is gained by such an effort. For me to discuss or debate with someone on an issue, such a person has to give me something to work with; an idea or a concept to accept or reject; a position to affirm or deny. It is just that simple because this is not a one-sided interview. If an atheist insists that he has no justification or proof for his atheism, or that he has no burden of proof for making the claim to the knowledge that God does not exist, then he is simply taking his atheistic stance “by faith”; and to me, he is just as irrational as a theist who believes in God just by faith alone.

Now, coming to the famous Russell’s Teapot, it is very plain to see what the false reasoning in that parody is. This atheist’s objection to God seems to be based on the idea that there is no evidence of a physical or material God that he may see or touch. But ask yourself, how many people live their daily lives by believing and operating on only those things they have actually physically seen or observed? This extreme skepticism poses a serious problem for science itself. There are some concepts that we have to assume or presuppose to do science for such concepts are not readily verifiable by strict empirical methods but nevertheless we are fully rational to believe them.

Let us consider this issue of believing only those things which can be seen. Who has seen numbers or the entire set of natural numbers from negative infinity to zero to positive infinity? No one has. It is not even possible to see numbers because numbers are abstract entities. You may have seen and counted physical objects or you may have seen numerals (a pictorial or handwritten representation of a number), but no one has or can ever see a number. On what basis then are we supposed to doubt the existence of numbers because they cannot be seen? Numbers exist whether there are people around to apprehend a realm of numbers or not. That one does not comprehend the existence of numbers is completely irrelevant to their existence. There are all sorts of notions like this example in which a skeptic would be deemed extremely peculiar for not believing simply because he has not seen.

At any rate, it is not surprising that he likened the idea of a God to some teapot orbiting the sun. He imagines that a belief in God is similar to a belief that there could be some unknown teapot floating in orbit between Earth and Mars. Should we be agnostic about the existence of this teapot then? The answer is NO. The reason why we do not believe that Russell’s Celestial teapot exists is because we know that it wasn’t put there by either American or Russian astronauts!  Besides, matter in the vast expanse of this universe’s space-time does not spontaneously self-organize into teapot shapes – not to talk of delicate ceramic teapots or other remorseless pieces of china!

Hey Huxley:

On a light hearted note, I want to playfully ask you why you emphasize points or questions with really huge bolded red font? It makes  your write up look a bit untidy if you ask me  Or, are you under the impression that if you simply bolded or italicized the question or point you want to emphasize, your interlocutor will miss it? I used to do this, but I've stopped doing that. Sometimes, when I see these dinosauric red fonts, I get the distinct impression you are screaming more than is really necessary. LOL, I hope I am just mistaken there. If you want to set apart the emphasized question or comment with a different color, how about using blue or any one of these colors that are easy on the eye? 

Anyway, back to the issue. I was sort of waiting for a response to my last post hoping that you are no longer under the weather. But then, when I saw your last few posts to this thread, I went to review your last post directed at me. It was then that I re-discovered that you are withholding your response. Your reason for that was that you said your response depended on my answer to a certain question.

If I may be bold to say, I do not see the immediate relevance of your question to the matter at hand (The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God). I was waiting to see if you had other responses to the main point we were discussing there. I’d rather have that issue resolved in some form or fashion before venturing into other related issues.

Now, if you feel that the question you asked me is somehow very important to continue or to advance that discussion, I’ll leave it up to you to flesh that out. In other words, this question:

“Are all entities and beings (transcendent minds and non-transcendent minds ) within and without (like God) the universe, subject to the same rules or laws  of logic?  Or are there some rules/laws of logic that are applicable to some beings and not to others?  Further, do you think the rules/laws of logic are immutable?”

has little or no direct bearing on the premises of the Cosmological Argument we were having. I think it is an unnecessary distraction from the discussion. I am sure that in other deeply philosophical discussions, we may contemplate that question and perhaps have a healthy but informed difference in opinion.

If you disagree with this, then it is up to you to demonstrate to me the relevance of this question to the topic at hand. This plainly means that instead of asking me a question here, you should be espousing an idea or concept that I’ll have to consider. Furthermore, it is up to you to then tie in this concept that you wish to illuminate with the rest of your response to my post. At that point, I’ll then have to reply stating whether we agree on the point you were making or not. 

If I have any objections, I’ll make it known to you with good reasons why. This is the sort of give and take that is supposed to take place here on this issue if we were truly having a friendly conversation– unless of course you were under the erroneous impression that I am here to be interrogated by you. I am trying to have a discussion with you here which means that I’ll need you to take positions or state your positions when they differ from mine.

So, I am trying to get you away from this discussional habit where all you seem to be able to do is cherry-pick sentences out of a paragraph/block of  your interlocutor's explanatory text, or cherry-pick clauses and phrases from whole sentences to wrestle with, WITHOUT ACTUALLY TAKING OR ADVANCING A SOLID DISCERNIBLE POSITION OF YOUR OWN. You’ll need to build your own case; you’ll need to flesh out your views and offer it as a healthy objection to the views I have shared if we are to make any meaningful progress here.

What exactly are you offering up for me to consider in these lengthy God discussions? This is what I meant when I asked you for a justification for your atheism. I wasn’t merely asking you to tell me the possibly fantastic reasons why you became an atheist. I am asking you to build a case that would lead to the deduction that there is no God. Think about it. I am asking you the same question that you’d ask a theist.  Therefore, your personal testimony (maybe about the ills of religion or the insincerity and hypocrisy of theists or perhaps the possible inconsistencies in the alleged divinely inspired or revered texts), while it makes for an interesting read, is ultimately beside the point. Theists could equally offer a simple personal testimony about some personal experience and use that alone as the reason for why they hold their God-belief.  That would be a good reason as any, if you ask me, but of course I know that such a reply would not convince you, would it?

huxley: Hello Prizm,

Nice to see you back here - I was beginning to wonder what happened to you.  Good to know you have been whacking all this while   .

I shall dive straight into the substance of the debate, avoiding all the fuss about whether you or I are being unnecessarily pedants about some words, as important was this is in its own right.

Thanks a bunch.

huxley: I did ask you how you came to the knowledge that "Whatever begins to exist has a cause or an explanation"  and your responds was :

[Quote]
Now to come to this question, the statement "Whatever begins to exist has a cause or an explanation" is a properly basic statement about existence which is confirmed rationally, philosophically, logically, scientifically or otherwise. It is like saying "there is an external world (to myself) which exists".

Barring the qualitatives of "scientifically of otherwise",  I deduce that what you meant here was that this knowledge was a priori.  You seemed to have had issues with me describing this as a priori, as evident from below;[/quote]

Nope, the problem here is that you are clinging to the terms a priori and a posteriori and trying to make this a discussion about what is a priori and what is a posteriori. Your hope is that such academic distinctions will obviate the force of the premise. A far as I am concerned, the veracity of the premise “whatever begins to exist has a cause or explanation” is independent of these distinctions. In order not to be drawn into some rabbit trail, I am prepared to entertain your philosophical interpretation here. The real bone of contention in my opinion lies in any attempt on your part to refute the premise.

huxley:
[Quote author= Prizm]
What exactly is your objection here? Have I argued that the premise is a priori? This is one of those situations where you strive to misunderstand what has been said. If you remember, I dealt with exactly this objection in my reply to your objection to the Cosmological Argument. Some people may feel that the first premise “Whatever begins to exist has a cause or explanation” is reasonably a priori knowledge and I have no problem with that. But let us grant that it is a posteriori knowledge to satisfy you. That little distinction on your part totally aligns with the way I see it and it is the way I want you to consider the premise.

From the foregoing, it is still not clear how you came by that knowledge.  As you know, a priori knowledge is knowledge that can be arrived at by pure reason or analysis alone - it requires no appeal to experience or the empirical methods.  On the other hand a posteriori knowledge requires an appeal to the empirical methods or experience. In view of what we know a prioir and a posteriori to mean, can you look back at your earlier statement and categories it under 1)  a priori 2)  a posteriori 3) both a priori and a posteriori 4) None of the above?  In other words, is the statement

[Quote]
Now to come to this question, the statement "Whatever begins to exist has a cause or an explanation" is a properly basic statement about existence which is confirmed rationally, philosophically, logically, scientifically or otherwise. It is like saying "there is an external world (to myself) which exists".[/quote]

1)  a priori ?
2)  a posteriori ?
3)  both a priori and a posteriori ?
4)  None of the above ?

Note that it is not a matter of satisfy me, but satisfying the rules and rubrics of reasons an logic that matter.[/quote]

Thanks for asking these questions. But before I answer them, I have a few questions to ask you first to see, from your answer, if we are working with the same meanings. I’ll make a number of statements and I’ll need you to tell me if you think these truth statements are a) a priori  b) a posteriori c) both a priori and a posteriori  d) None of the above.
i) Everything that has a shape has a size

ii) No event precedes itself

iii) Nothing can be red all over and at the same time blue all over

For each of these statements or premises (i-iii) I’ll need you to tell me whether your choice from (A) to (D), whatever that choice is, refutes or negates the premise. That is the real issue here.

huxley: I noted earlier that there are many empirical facts that indicates that somethings can come into existance without a cause.  The two well-known and commonly accepted of these class are the radioactive decay to atomic elements and quantum vacuum fluctuations.  I did ask you to consider the case of radioactive decay. For instance, what causes Carbon-14 to decay to Nitrogen-14?  You said;

[Quote]
Nevertheless that minute distinction does not obviate or undercut the first premise at all. So when you say that there are many empirical facts that do so, I’ll have to strongly disagree with you and ask for your evidence. Now, it seems to me that you are trying to undermine the first premise of the Cosmological Argument by talking about radioactive decay? Am I right?

Here’s how we are going to do this. Rather than asking me what I mean by “cause”, I’ll allow you to explain what Radioactive decay is and how it supposedly subverts the first premise. The reason why I am doing it this way is because I want this to be conversational in nature. You don’t get to simply assert that Radioactive Decay belies the premise. To me this is the main crux of this entire post. Besides, I do not want a situation where I demonstrate initially that the premise is intact only for you to recline in your comfortable skeptical chair to declare it some unjustified adhoc assertion. So, here’s your opportunity to take a crack at physics to show us that Radioactive Decay destroys the first premise. It may be that this little exercise may help to fully illuminate the depth and scope of the first premise though as I said previously, it has been constantly confirmed philosophically and scientifically.

OK, at this point it pays to take a break and make some definition of terminology - CAUSATION.  What do we understand by the word CAUSATION?  This is where wikipedia comes in handy:

Causation - Causality refers to the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is a direct consequence of the first.  See wikipedia for details.

Obviously, this is a simple definition, but it is still useful for our discussion.  Causation implies a cause and an effect, with the cause happen before or at the same time as the effect.  

Now, what is radioactive decay?    Again wikipedia to the rescue:

Radioactive decay is the process in which an unstable atomic nucleus spontaneously loses energy by emitting ionizing particles and radiation. This decay, or loss of energy, results in an atom of one type, called the parent nuclide transforming to an atom of a different type, named the daughter nuclide. For example: a carbon-14 atom (the "parent" emits radiation and transforms to a nitrogen-14 atom (the "daughter". This is a stochastic process on the atomic level, in that it is impossible to predict when a given atom will decay, but given a large number of similar atoms the decay rate, on average, is predictable.  See   here for more.

Now, what causes an unstable atomic nucleus to decay such that it emits other particles?  As far as I know,  NOTHING is known to cause the decay of the nucleus.  For instance, you could not act such as to take away the "cause" of the decay.  Nothing influences the rate of decay, nothing can stop.  No amount of heat treatment, pressure treatment, etc, etc, is known to affect the rate of decay.  If the "cause" of radioactive decay is anything outside of the atom itself, then on the view that causation requires two things - the cause and the effect, then you could imagine a scenario where you could take away the cause to prevent the decay.

So, from this analysis, it could be said that the N-14 atom came into existence from C-14 without a cause.   Hey, I am happy to be contradicted if you have got some better evidence that what I just described is wrong.[/quote]

When you attempt to disprove the first premise, you have to realize that in its full explication, the first premise of the Cosmological Argument covers not just efficient but material causes. To paraphrase it “Nothing spontaneously pops or comes out of nothing, by nothing, from nothing” or “Being does not come from non-being”.

I have already dealt decisively with the whole virtual particle objection elsewhere (Has Atheism taken over NL) so I am not going to repeat that here.

Let us go straight to radioactive decay because this is the most important point of this thread. This is just the point I am looking to discuss as it connects to the Cosmological Argument which I am making.

There are two ways to answer your question. One is to focus on the concluding statement “So, from this analysis, it could be said that the N-14 atom came into existence from C-14 without a cause”.  This statement is self-contradictory. How can you say that N-14 comes into existence without a cause when you just said that it came from C-14? Isn’t this transformation or radioactive decay the very cause you are trying to flesh out? How can you propose that N-14 spontaneously popped into existence out of nothing uncaused and in the same breath mention the prior existence of C-14 which materially caused it? This is self-refuting and it nullifies your argument; indeed it demolishes the very process or phenomenon (radioactive decay) that you are trying to show.

The second way to answer the question is to draw the distinction here that radioactive decay is really just a process or a phenomenon. Unlike the virtual particle objection which more or less involves finite particulars, when talking about radioactive decay we are merely talking about a process that involves finite particulars – specifically unstable nuclei.

I suspect that the problem here is that you misunderstand the stochastic (random) and indeterminate/unpredictable nature of this spontaneous process to mean that it doesn’t have a cause or explanation. The cause or explanation of radioactive decay is simple – it is unstable nuclei. As a matter of fact, all you need to do is keep reading the Wikipedia page you got your definition from to see that radioactive decay is not even that mysterious. It is richly governed by the physical laws. Radioactive decay (of any type) is only possible because of the presence of unstable or radioactive nuclides. Radioactive or unstable nuclei, based on their configuration, have the property that a random slight disturbance could upset the apple cart as it were and facilitate another rearrangement of the particles in the nucleus followed by the release of heat energy. This is essentially what radioactive decay is. When a stable or ground state is reached, such decays cease.

Tell me, can there ever be any spontaneous radioactive decay event if there is no 1) Unstable nucleus 2) a perturbatory energy to act on the unstable configuration of particles in an unstable nucleus? The answer is clearly no. Thus, this is no valid undercutting defeater of the first premise.

huxley: In view of your use of some terms from modal logic (ie necessity and contingency) and your use of the word transcendence, and your ascription of these words to God, I asked:

Can you explain how a NECESSARY transcendent disembodied being inter-acts with a physical universe?  BY WHAT MECHANISM?

You said:
[Quote author= Prizm]
I am not exactly sure what you are asking me here. When you asked how one knows that a necessary entity (like God) transcends the universe, I gave my answer. I also contrasted it with another type of necessary entity like numbers.

At any rate, I may be wrong, but it seems that you are asking me the mechanism or physics by which God (here you can substitute the word ‘God’ with any appropriate synonym for this necessary first mover) created the universe. In other words, you are asking me to speak on exactly how God created ex nihilo. If this is what you are asking, the answer is that I don’t know and no one can possibly know how this supernatural event happened. There is no physics for this event. No one is equipped to pronounce on how such a metaphysical event occurred. Our human physics can only probe or go back to the first few moments after this event. There is a limit to what we can actually postulate or verify scientifically because our contemporary physics break down at certain barriers. So we may need a whole new physics to probe even further than we currently know.

No, I was not asking how God created the world - rather I wanted to know things like the following, given his disembodied, transcendent and necessary ontology:

1)  Does he created material things within the universe?  If so, by what mechanism?

2)  Can he move an object from A to B?  If so, by what mechanism?

In short, how does the immaterial unphysical inter-act with the material physical world?  For the sake or argument, I am taking for granted that God, on your definition exists, but am examining claims that you have made about his ontology.  That was my line of reasoning with that initial question.[/quote]

At the risk of appearing pedantic once again, I have another little correction to make here. I did not say ‘disembodied’ mind as that would imply that there was a body which was later cast off as it were. I said ‘unembodied’ mind which in its proper understanding means that what we are talking about does not possess a material body ab initio. It seems to me that by simply dwelling on the terms ‘immaterial’ and ‘unphysical’, you are forgetting that I mentioned that God is a mind and thus possesses not just consciousness but free will, superlative reason and logic. These are the attributes of this necessary being in addition to omnipotence or omniscience. If that were not so – if God is like another necessary but causally effete or inert entity like numbers then there could not have been any creation of the universe at all. To be able to cause or create an entity which is contingent and temporal (like the universe), the causative agency, God, must possess not just intelligence or rationality but the freewill to do so – otherwise there will simply be the uninterrupted state of transcendence and no universe would be around.

The first question you asked me is a repetition of the question you asked before although you have chosen to phrase it differently. When you ask what mechanism God used to create the universe along with it all matter, space, time and energy, you are asking a question that no human physics can answer. It is the same thing as asking individually for what mechanism God created space, or created time, or created matter or created energy. All these came into existence with the universe. Now, when these conditions are laid down, the reorganization of matter into different forms can then be pursued by physics. They can now be studied, understood, and modeled mathematically – that is to say that one can then advance empirical or naturalistic explanations for reconfigurations of matter. Matter and its reorganization thus become amenable to universal physical laws.

Now, for God to physically interact with the universe to entertain and satisfy ‘interesting’ skeptical queries like whether he can move objects around in space or create other reorganizations of matter, I want to draw your attention back to the thought experiment we did in my last reply. If you remember, from that thought experiment, it was evident that as the creator of that 2-D universe, you can physically impact or interact with that universe. Your temporary decision to be present or evident in that 2-D realm may be seen and understood by 2-D creatures as completely natural to their 2-D framework  - but their limited perception says nothing about and cannot contradict your higher dimensional existence. Likewise, if a transcendental omnipotent God chooses to directly impact the physical world to do such mundane things like move chairs around or create razor blades or can openers, he would use the raw material already available in the universe to do so, but by a process that is supernatural. Another option would be that he could indirectly set in place a natural or physical mechanism or sequence of events that would result in the achievement of that purpose.

As a philosophical or theosophical rejoinder, I’ll add that God doesn’t tinker with creation in such an erratic and purposeless manner – for him to directly interfere physically in the natural world there has to be a divine purpose which such a manifestation of his omnipotence would fulfill.

huxley:
[Quote author=Prizm]
But here’s a point to consider: no matter what advances we make, there is no chance that we can ever get to a model that is eternal in the past. Here I am reminded of how nebulous or metaphysical some of these new areas in physics like the String Theory are—there is always the specter of a cosmic beginning even if we can get ourselves to not only picture deeply counterintuitive things like 11 dimensional hyperspace but to actually show that it exists. In the end, there are boundaries even to the string theory model assuming we decide that it successfully unifies all fundamental physical interactions. And so no physics could speak about what happens in that transcendental domain.

I think you are shouting horay here a bit prematurely and for someone to say this of science betray your lack of knowledge not only of science, but also of the current state of knowledge in cosmology and theoretical physics.  If you have not kept up with the state of affairs in cosmology, astromony and theoetical physics,  allow me to tell you the following.  The two competing candidates for the best explanation of the origins of the cosmos are  1)  Inflationary Theory 2) The Cyclic Model founded on String Theory and the concept of membranes (or branes)

1)  The Inflationary model is essentially the Big Bang, modified to accommodate more explanatory potential.

2) The Cyclic Model envisages a totally different view of the universe. That our universe sit on one of several membrane and that the Big Bang was the result of the collision of two of these membranes.

For my money, the Cyclic model promises to answer more of the currently baffling features of the universe than the inflationary model, features such as:

-  the flatness of observed space
-  the origin and role of dark energy and dark matter.

Both models make prediction that can be verified empirically and at present both have pass all but one of the six milestone predictions.  In fact, the fifth milestone prediction was only achieved quite recently, with the publication of the results of WMAP, regarding red tilt,  - a feature that both models predicted.  The winner will turn on which models best predicts the sixth milestone, something called gravitational waves.

The Cyclic Model postulates that membranes are in a cyclic pattern of collision, retraction, attraction and collision, ad infintum.  Although it is not necessarily committed to a infinite past, it can also very well support a finite past model.

So let's keep our ears to the ground for developments in this space before we make forecast like this.[/quote]

[Quote author=Prizm]
Physics picks up and makes sense only after the universe is created along with it every physical quantity or phenomena.  Indeed the way I see it, the theories or the models of the Origin of the Universe can indeed be revised as time goes on, but in any and all revisions, there is no chance or possibility that any viable and experimentally verifiable model will be shown to have been eternal in the past. So, you can push back the origin of the Universe as far as you want, but you will always be confronted with the specter of a cosmic beginning. That cosmic beginning cries out for an explanation. This is where, as I have demonstrated over and over again, the necessary existence of God becomes very evident. So, the possible existence of multiple universes in some Mother Universe does not even affect the argument. Nevertheless, I am by no means dogmatically wedded to any model. We’ll go with where the evidence points.
[/quote]

Hahaha. Apart from simply stating some disjointed facts about the chaotic inflationary model or the cyclic ecpyrotic model (brane cosmology), have you made any point here? Let us assume that I am shouting hooray here and you’ve somehow figured out that I am ignorant about the current state of cosmology, here’s what I need you to address or demonstrate. I want you to show me how any of these models have been scientifically proven to be eternal or infinite in the past . This is the main issue here. In other words, it is not enough to mention that there are other models out there – a fact I think that is pretty obvious to any serious person – I[i] want you to show me how any of these theories have  been shown to avoid that cosmic singularity in other to be infinite in the past. [/i]

No one has argued that these models couldn’t be shown to infinite in the future. Indeed any potentially inflating or potentially oscillating universe could be shown to go on indefinitely in the future with successive and scattered Bangs and successive and scattered Bounces. But none of these either inflating or oscillating models can be shown to be past incomplete or eternal in the past. The need for an initial singularity cannot be eliminated. LOL, not even when you consider the highly speculative Hartle-Hawking model which starts dealing with imaginary entities so as to avoid a point singularity is the issue resolved.

You know, sometimes atheists hang their hopes on the possibility that this issue would eventually be resolved in their favor. This is why the entire history of 20th century cosmology has been one failed attempt after another to get away from the intuitive inference to theism apparent from the Standard Big Bang Model. I suppose in this endeavor, we can sit back and observe people build fantastic models to explain away the specter of a cosmic beginning out of nothing but pure speculations – speculations which are more metaphysical in nature than they are actually physical or scientific.

huxley: On the burden of proof question, you said the following;
[Quote]
First of all, this assumption is Wrong. This is a burden of proof fallacy on your part. But before I show how that is the case, allow me to briefly explain the terms theist, atheist and agnostic. An agnostic is one who confesses ignorance on the question of whether God exists or not. An agnostic therefore makes no claims on whether God exists or not. Theists and atheists on the other hand, make knowledge claims about the existence or non-existence of God. An atheist maintains that a God does not exist while a theist maintains that a God exists. The only party that has the luxury of sitting complacently to weigh the evidence on both sides of this issue is the agnostic. Now, if an agnostic is sufficiently persuaded, he may decide that some kind of God exists even if he does not think that his feeble human reason can fully understand that God. He becomes an agnostic theist. On the other hand, there are equally agnostic atheists and they maintain that not only does God not exist, if such a thing as God did in fact exist, that God cannot be accessed by human reason.

As you might expect, I do not agree with some of your definitions above.  I know we could quibble about this until kingdom come, nevertheless I shall say what I understand by these words:

Atheism - Admits of a number of definitions -  

1) The view that there are absolute NO Gods.  This is sometimes called Strong or Positive or Explicit Atheism, and is generally understood in philosophical as rather a metaphysical commitment (I shall not go into why this is so for now)[/quote]

If you don’t mind I actually want you to go into why this is so. I’ll be expecting to read a specific answer to this in your next reply.

huxley: 2) The view that one does not have a belief in god or one lacks a god-belief. This is also called Weak or Implicit Atheism. Comtemporary philosophy regards this view as essentially questioning the ontology of gods given by the theists.

Agnostic or Agnosticism - The agnostic makes a claim (or rather lack of claim) about knowledge.  The agnostic basically says that it is unknowable one way or the other.  See the below from wikipedia and see the etymology of the word.

Agnosticism . . . is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, spiritual beings, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove and hence unknowable.  See here   for more details.

"Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle."  T. S. Huxley.

So according to the standardly accepted version of the term agnostic, an agnostic is not making any claims, but simply says that the answer to the question of god's existence is UNKNOWABLE.   How could you go from the definition of agnosticism to the following claim?
Quote
The only party that has the luxury of sitting complacently to weigh the evidence on both sides of this issue is the agnostic.

Note that the agnostic is NOT neutral -  if you consider the two extremes of theism and atheism, the agnostic does not sit in the middle.  For instance, it is conceivable that one could be an agnostic theist, or an agnostic atheist.  So which flavour of agnostic will you give the role of sitting complacently to weigh the evidence on both sides?  Will it  be;

1) An agnostic theist
2) An agnostic atheist
3) An agnostic agnostic (if there is such a thing)?

I’ll simply disagree with your definitions here.

First of all, let us tackle your definition of atheism. By your broad and overarching definition, you have incorporated into atheism not just agnostics but non-theists who are not atheists or agnostics. By presenting this definition, you are seeking to absolve yourself of any burden which you should rightly shoulder for maintaining an atheistic position. I simply reject what you have coined ‘weak or implicit atheism’. I reject this distinction from so-called strong atheism because by its definition, you are viciously grabbing the definitional terrain of “non-theism”.

Non-theism therefore, in its proper meaning, is the absence or lack of belief in God.  So in its proper meaning, non-theism would include atheists (who maintain that God does not exist or that the existence of God is impossible), agnostics (who do not know whether a God exists or not), skeptics (who do not believe in the existence of God or a supernatural being) and verificationists (who refuse to discuss the existence or non-existence of God because the concept of God to them is unintelligible).

Non-theism would also include newborns or people who have never been exposed to theistic ideas and as such maintain an unconscious lack or absence of belief in God. This speaks more about their psychological state. Furthermore, it will also include children who have the conceptual capacity to grasp these issues but who have never been exposed to them. Indeed to stretch the example out, it will also encompass your pets and people who have sustained deep and irreversibly brain loss or damage (in a comatose or vegetative state), who for all intents and purposes cannot be said to consciously bear a belief in God or anything at all. So, my good friend, I am just not going to allow you to sweep everything into the atheist tent.

Now, let us consider what you have said about agnosticism. First of all, I am not offering the position that theists and atheists must conduct discussions in the presence of an agnostic whereby the agnostic is deemed the arbiter of sorts for the discussion. If that was what you understood, please correct that misimpression. I am not saying that an agnostic is someone saddled with the unenviable position of arbitrating or deciding for theists and atheists what views they should hold. Why would I assign such a task to them?

My point was that just like a theist had a burden to shoulder for his claim to the knowledge that God exists, an atheist also has a burden to shoulder for the claim to the knowledge that God does not exist. The only one who doesn’t have a burden to shoulder in the discussion is the agnostic who does not claim to know whether God exists or not. They do not make any knowledge claims at all.

Nevertheless, one can get very technical and then define an agnostic as a person who makes the claim that “if God exists or not, such knowledge is unknown but it is possible for someone to know” (soft agnosticism) or “if God exists or not, such knowledge is unknowable to anybody”, (hard agnosticism). Does this change anything? My reply is that it changes nothing. The Theist and the Atheist make a claim to some knowledge-based belief while an Agnostic on the other hand makes a claim to Ignorance. An agnostic is still confessing ignorance or nescience on the matter by suggesting that it is unknown or unknowable. But from this, you can see that in one example the confession of ignorance (strong agnosticism) is obstinate and confrontational. The strong agnostic view is saying that the theist and the atheist are both wrong and that they cannot conceivably know what they claim even if they actually have sound arguments. It is an extreme view as you can see.

But if you remember my analogy with the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrials, you’ll see that as an agnostic listener in any discussions between people who believe that extraterrestrials exist and those who do not, I do not shoulder any burden of proof. My agnosticism rises or falls based on what I hear and consider. The catch is that an agnostic has to be willing to consider the evidence. So after exposure to evidence for and against, I could decide whichever way I am led on the whole question of extraterrestrials.

It is evident therefore that it is possible to be an agnostic atheist who is atheistic in not believing the existence of God but agnostic in the sense that he does not actually claim to have a definitive knowledge that God does not exist. This becomes a function of what he is prepared to believe based on the evidence he has received because he cannot appeal to his own prior lack of reason or knowledge.

Likewise, it is possible to be an [b]agnostic theist [/b]who does believe that God exists but does not claim to have a definitive knowledge of this. Also, this is a function of what he is prepared to believe based on what evidence he has received because he cannot appeal to his own prior lack of reason or knowledge. So, an agnostic theist may be led to say something like “Yikes it seems to me that God exists, but gosh, I just don’t know!”
The fact still remains that on the issue, it is the agnostic irrespective of the flavor (soft or hard agnosticism) that gets a pass on the issue of the burden of proof. The reason is because he is not claiming to ‘know’ something (which is whether God exists or does not exist) – he is claiming ‘no knowledge’ on the proposition which essentially reduces to ‘ignorance’ on the matter.

huxley: Still on the terminological issue, you said the following;
[Quote]
With the term atheist defined as I did, you can see that I do not subscribe to some newly revised definition of atheism which merely seeks to present atheism as “the absence of belief in the existence of God.” This loose redefinition absolves the atheist of a responsibility or burden in any discussion and squarely puts all the responsibility on the theist. By this definition then, an atheist becomes synonymous with non-theist - a broad term which would include not just traditional/strong Atheists but Agnostics and Verificationists.

As far as I am concerned this redefinition trivializes the discourse because by this definition, atheism ceases to be a viewpoint. It becomes a psychological state which is shared by people who hold a wide range of views or no views at all. With this definition, babies who hold no opinion on the issue would also have to be called atheists; people who suffer some deep and irreversible brain damage will automatically have to be reclassified atheists since they have no demonstrable belief or opinion on the matter. We can even stretch that definition to include your pets - suddenly your pets would qualify as atheists since they have no belief in the existence of God. Consequently a theist may equally loosely define theism as “the belief in the existence of God” and be equally absolved of any responsibility or confirmatory burden. The result is that everyone will sit tight in their domain of belief or disbelief and no God debates/discussions will ever arise; neither will any answers arise.

Supposing, I tell you that my position is the following -  I do not have a god-belief and that I do not belief there is a god.  And that people with this state of mind call themselves Nodists. I argue that I have every right to call myself whatever I want, just as Huxley had the right to formulate the word AGNOSTIC to describe people of a certain state of mind.  Under this new view,  these terms now become

1)  Atheist - one who asserts positively that there are no gods
2)  Nodist -  one who does not have a god-belief and does not belief in god.
3)  Agnostic -  one who thinks that it is unknowable one way or the other.

Supposing the word nodist enters into current usage, how would you deal with the arguments from the nodist position?  By the way, I am arguing the nodist position.[/quote]

You do not have to invent the word ‘nodist’ here. You could have just said that you were skeptical about the belief in God. That will conveniently explain why you do not have a belief in God. However, unlike certain non-theists like the comatose, newborns, children or people who have never encountered theistic ideas and thus exhibit a simple psychological absence of a belief in God, the skeptic and the agnostic once they have been exposed to theistic ideas and evidence are not in the same boat. The former do not even know what it is to argue for or against the proposition. The latter have consciously decided to anchor themselves to a particular viewpoint and therefore they need justification for that position.

An agnostic atheist for example might just decide not to waste his time since he already confesses that he doesn’t know definitively that a God does not exist. A skeptic who maintains the unbelief in God despite having heard contrary positions is not in a position to argue with anyone at all on whether God exists or does not exist. That is the difference. You can maintain your skepticism and allow others their tiresome God-belief. Once you step out to argue that God does not exist or to suggest that God likely does not exist based on your belief, you have automatically become an atheist and as such, you shoulder the atheist’s burden. You automatically have to present evidence that would lead to the inescapable conclusion that God does not exist. That nodist position is fine so long as you keep it to yourself. Once you come out to engage in any arguments, you will need to present justification for that belief.

huxley:
You said:
[Quote]
For example, I do not know whether extraterrestrials exist or not. I have not visited all of the vastness of the universe to be able to say with any degree of confidence that there are no aliens in Andromeda or anywhere else. As far as extraterrestrials are concerned, I am agnostic about their existence or non-existence. They may or may not exist and I’ll openly confess my ignorance on that matter. However, there might be people who are deeply convinced that there are extraterrestrials and may have good reasons for such a conviction. Equally, there are people who are convinced that there are no such things as extraterrestrials. In any discussion on whether extraterrestrials exist or not, both sides which affirm or deny the existence of extraterrestrials have to present good arguments why their side should be believed. As an agnostic, all I get to do is weigh the evidence. In the end, I may be unconvinced that extraterrestrials exist OR I could be convinced that they do exist even if before that point, I have never actually witnessed an extraterrestrial. Before this can happen though, I have to be willing and receptive to the evidence offered for or against. If I am dogmatically set against one side of the discussion then it may be that no countervailing evidence from that side will convince me.

Like I said above, I do not agree with your ascription of the role of the mediator or arbiter to the agnostic.  All parties in the debate have as their responsibility to assess ALL the evidence from ALL other parties.[/quote]

I have done no such thing as ascribe the role of mediator or arbiter to the agnostic.

huxley: Let me address the below with the following thought experiment:
[Quote]
A person who posits that extraterrestrials do not exist cannot say that the inability of the other side to show evidence that would suggest the existence of an extraterrestrial is a positive proof of his own claim that extraterrestrials do not exist. That would be logically fallacious. All this would show in this example is that the person proposing that extraterrestrials exist has not proven his own case or has not shown evidence that would strongly suggest so – NOT that the denier of the proposition has been proven right! From the denier of the proposition, we need to hear a positive case that would suggest that their side is to be believed. Such a person, for example, may provide authoritative evidence of having traversed the entire universe and seeing no evidence of such extraterrestrials. In the absence of such strong positive disconfirming evidence, anyone is still completely within his rational rights to believe in the existence of extraterrestrials.

Thus, we are not in some law court where a person is assumed innocent if the prosecution cannot demonstrate some palpable guilt. This is more or less an academic exercise and each side of this conversational divide has to show with positive reasons why their side ought to be believed. Each side in essence has to build up a case that argues for the truthfulness of their knowledge claims. It is utterly fallacious therefore to think that in this scenario, you bear no responsibility or burden of proof for adopting your position, and as such, you can claim the possible lack of evidence for theistic positions as positive proof of atheistic positions. This false reasoning simply reduces to a fundamental presumption of atheism because “Absence of evidence” is not “Evidence of Absence”.

Can you tell me which of the following entities are standardly thought to exists and why? Can you also explain HOW YOU COME TO KNOW THEY EXIST OR THEY DO NOT EXIST?

1)  Dragon
2)  Nfenah-nfenah
3)  Santa Claus
4)  Mami Wata
5)  Satyr

Could you methodology for investigating the five entities above be applied to investigating the existence of God?  WHY?[/quote]

LOL, to follow your example, I’ll need you to define these five entities. If I am to waste my time entertaining this distraction, I’ll need you to give me not just the ontologies of these entities, but also a response as to whether they satisfy an evidence expectation criterion or a knowledge expectation criterion.

huxley:
[Quote]
So it is entirely possible for instance for a theist not to be able to present any proof at all for his position. Nevertheless, it would be deeply illogical to assume that that necessarily proves the assertions or positions of the atheist.  Atheism is not the default position here. The default position is agnosticism, a confession of nescience, which essentially says “I don’t know whether God exists or whether God does not exist”.

What do you mean by default?  Is it suppose to mean one who has not take a view or a position of the God question?   How about a two-year old child?  On your definition of theism atheism and agnosticism,  where would you put a two-year old child?[/quote]

By the default position, I mean the lack of a position for or against. This is why I said that agnosticism is the default position in a discussion on whether God exists or not. The Theist and the Atheist are on opposite sides of that agnostic position. Children, newborn or other non-theists who show an absence of God-belief based on the fact that they have not been exposed to theistic ideas are exempted from this discussion.

huxley: Below, you are giving some sort of ontology of God, following on from your earlier definition of God as a necessary, transcendent, disembodied being with a mind and intelligence.
[Quote]
If God had a body, he’ll merely be a subset of this universe and therefore logically he ceases to be a necessary entity. In other words, he would not even qualify for the name God. To have a body is to have finite parts or to be composed of matter, and necessary entities do not possess finite physically instantiated particulars. Does it make the issue simpler if instead of the word ‘mind’ you substituted the word ‘intelligence’?

As an omnipotent being however, he can interact and directly impact the physical realm/universe. So I see no logical inconsistency in saying that God for example, to show himself in the universe, may temporarily assume some material form. I see no logical inconsistency also in saying that after establishing the laws and properties of the universe or natural realm, a God that transcends the universe may from time to time directly impact it. Such interventions would appropriately be supernatural interventions since by definition, a supernatural event is not simply an ‘implausible’, ‘impossible’ or counter-intuitive event, BUT an event that in its proper context cannot be adequately explained by a simplistic recourse to naturalistic explanations.

To my question about why God lacks a body, you said " he’ll merely be a subset of this universe and therefore logically he ceases to be a necessary entity".  So God is a necessary being.  But that statement is worrying, as your God already possess other attributes of the universe such as minds, freewill and inteligence.  Why does this not make him part of the universe, but having a body would make him part of the universe?[/quote]

I do not like this disingenuous style of just selecting one or two sentences in a whole paragraph of an answer or explanation to quibble with. It is even worse when you select parts of a complete sentence to fuss over when the full sentence (or paragraph as the case may be) will properly illuminate what has been said. Once again, I have not used the word “disembodied mind”. What I used was “unembodied mind”.

I see no reason why you omitted “If God had a body” [/i]in that sentence. The full sentence was [i]“If God had a body, he’ll merely be a subset of this universe and therefore logically he ceases to be a necessary entity”. Like I said earlier, if the ontology of God is to say that God is composed of matter and thus had a body, there will be no reason to call him God. He will just be another contingent entity of even lesser import than the universe. On that view, the talk about God transcending the universe does not even arise.

Now, it is wrong to think that freewill or intelligence is a property of the brute physical universe. These attributes are attributes of minds. My position therefore is that as the primordial and necessary sentient being, God had also allowed for some of the entities in this physical domain to possess infinitesimally small portions of his transcendentally anchored attributes. Always refer back to that thought experiment we carried. That it is possible for instance that the 2-D creatures existing in the 2-D reality you created to move around in 2-D space does not mean that you, as a higher dimensional being, is a subset of the 2-D world seeing that you exhibit motion yourself. The motility of these 2-D creatures is simply a very small portion or scale compared to what you are capable of.

huxley: Can God bring about a state of affairs that result in him having a body?  If so,  would he cease to be a necessary being ?  Remember what you said above -( he’ll merely be a subset of this universe and therefore logically he ceases to be a necessary entity)

This is just a hopeless misrepresentation of what I have said.

huxley: God ceases to be a necessary being by obtaining a physical body, as you say above,   does he also lose the quality of transcendence, since necessity implies transcendence?

If God cannot bring about a state of affairs whereby he has material form,  can he be said to be omnipotent?

What I have said is not that God is a subset of this universe but rather that if God were said to be an entity X, quantitatively composed of finite matter thus possessing a material body, then entity X is contingent (and not necessary) and therefore cannot be called God. Like I said he does not possess finite physically instantiated particulars.

Also, I have not suggested that God loses transcendence at any point. Omnipotent as he is, if he were to directly impact the universe and make his presence perceivable in the universe, it is illogical to expect that such an instantiation will be transcendental. If it were, no one could perceive it. If he were to arbitrarily choose to impact the universe, it stands to reason that such an effort on his part could only be perceived if such a physical instantiation has material component. His transcendental attribute is unaltered. He’ll be existing transcendentally as God while simultaneously and volitionally interacting with our spatio-temporal reality.

In the thought example we carried, if you were to thrust your finger onto the plane on this 2-D reality, you’ll be perceived as another 2-D object by these 2-D creatures but that in no way destroys the 3-D spatial attribute of your finger. The difference is that in a 2-D perceptual framework, your finger seemingly loses its higher dimensional attribute which is realistically never altered.

God’s omnipotence does not mean that he performs logical self-contradictions like atheists love to ask. It means that he can do anything which is possible to do without contradicting his own nature. Sometimes you find atheists asking ridiculous questions like “If God is omnipotent, can he make himself not be God again?” or “If God is omnipotent, can he make a rock so big that he cannot carry it?”

huxley: You said:
[Quote]
So I see no logical inconsistency in saying that God for example, to show himself in the universe, may temporarily assume some material form. I see no logical inconsistency also in saying that after establishing the laws and properties of the universe or natural realm, a God that transcends the universe may from time to time directly impact it.

You said above that if God were to bring himself into the universe in material form, he would no longer be a necessary being. So in the fleeting moments that he assumes material form to show himself in the world is he necessary or contingent or transcendent? [/quote]

This is yet another misrepresentation of what I have said. Refer to my explanation above.

huxley: Consider these two statements of yours:

Statement A:

[Quote]
If God had a body, he’ll merely be a subset of this universe and therefore logically he ceases to be a necessary entity. In other words, he would not even qualify for the name God. To have a body is to have finite parts or to be composed of matter, and necessary entities do not possess finite physically instantiated particulars. Does it make the issue simpler if instead of the word ‘mind’ you substituted the word ‘intelligence’?

And this

Statement B:

[Quote]
So I see no logical inconsistency in saying that God for example, to show himself in the universe, may temporarily assume some material form. I see no logical inconsistency also in saying that after establishing the laws and properties of the universe or natural realm, a God that transcends the universe may from time to time directly impact it. [/quote]

Statement A asserts that God cannot have a material form (because he will cease to be necessary)  BUT Statement B says God can temporarily assume material form.  Are These two statements logically consistent? [/quote]

Your problem lies in what you think that these statements are saying.

Statement A is saying that God by definition does not have a body. He is a mind. If he had a body by definition, he will not be metaphysically necessary or transcendental.

Statement B on the other hand is saying that as a necessary and omnipotent entity, God has the capacity to interact with the physical realm.

To be evident or to be perceived in the physical realm, it is illogical to expect that any such instantiation would be his full transcendental nature. If that were so, he just could not be perceived or understood in the physical realm. Besides, as has already been repeated ad infinitum, he transcends this universe. Such an instantiation has to be physical for it to be perceived - but doing so doesn’t detract from his transcendence for it is by virtue of his transcendentally necessary self and power that he temporarily allows empirical instantiation. Remember the thought experiment we carried and how you can simultaneously be a 3-D creator existing independently but observable as a 2-D entity in a 2-D universe.

huxley: From your reading of philosophy, can you provide an reference to books, journals, articles, material that support the view that an entity is capable of at one time being necessary and at another contingent?


On the Christian view, Jesus was God in material form.  I don't know if you are Christian, but let's assume that you are.   From you analysis,  what was the ontic status of Jesus?  Was he

1)  Necessary and hence transcendent?
2)  Contingent given that he possess a material form and consequently non-transcendent?
3)  Necessary and contingent?

I’d rather not get into this topic of Jesus for now. Let us keep the discussion where it currently is. I am sure that a time and a place would come for us to get ourselves into that discussion.

To summarize: [b]In this lengthy reply, we have accidentally gotten into other discussions tangential to the Cosmological Argument and its refutation. You sought to subvert the first premise that argues for the existence of God by appealing to virtual particles and radioactive decay. As far as I am concerned, this is the main crux of these length posts. I think I have also decisively shot down these objections. If you have any other objection to the first premise, I’ll gladly entertain them. [/b]In the absence of further objections to the first premise, I may or may not be responding to some of these other finer philosophical or theosophical enquiries. The reason is because I want to refocus the discussion on the Cosmological Argument. If you remember, the whole exchange between us is hinged on the premise “Whatever begins to exist has a cause or explanation”.

By the way, in your next reply, at least in other to keep me interested in this discussion, I want to insist that you provide me with a positive case for your atheism. That is only fair, isn’t it? 

Chrisbenogor:

I have an interesting theory, what if the answer is energy?
You know we cannot destroy energy, we can only convert it, what if energy always existed?  This universe, the planets and eventually man are consequences of energy? Earth adapted its own energy by whatever crazy means and life sprung up as a derivative of that energy chemical, mechanical and whatever?
What do you think guys? Do you have your own theories?

Interesting topic to think about but remember that energy itself is not eternal. It came into existence at the Big Bang with space, time and all matter.

Secondly, the idea of spontaneous abiogenesis has been flirted with and ultimately discarded. There is no scientific support for that hypothesis. As a matter of fact, if you press Richard Dawkins hard enough, he'll concede to you that he does not know how life actually began on this planet. Evolution, for all its attractions does not address that issue either - it merely picks up after life has mysteriously appeared. Maybe, some day we'll find some naturalistic explanation but as of right now, no one knows. Indeed, Richard Dawkins is open to the idea that some unknown extraterrestrial could have seeded this planet with its earliest form of life.

Alright, keep trucking fellas.

LOL,

For some reason my last post would not show up here. Posted it three times, and yet, it keeps disappearing. Looks like the spambot or whatever monster that trolls the site is on full alert.

Oh well, to fulfill my promise of relaying my discussions with Huxley on the Cosmological Argument, you can check this link.

http://anaedo.blog-city.com/the_ca.htm

Cheers.

Double Post

Double Post.

As promised, here's a redacted but concise formulation of the Cosmological Argument:

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2) The Universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

What this means quite plainly is that the universe along with space, time, matter and energy [/b]came into being. The universe is not a necessary entity; it is a contingent entity. It does not have an infinite past. The only necessary being/entities one can think of are  a) [b]numbers b) an unembodied personal mind. This is the conception of God that theists work with—a personal, unembodied, spaceless, infinite, eternal mind. It goes without saying that numbers though necessary, do not have any creative ability; they do not stand in causal relations. They are causally effete. It follows that the cause of the universe is a mind greater than the universe—by which we mean something that is immaterial, boundless, spaceless and eternally pre-existent,

Another argument an atheist may make when confronted with the Cosmological Argument is to suggest that “the universe is uncaused” which is a patently false idea given its finitude in the past. An atheist is left with the worst option of declaring that the “universe just popped out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing” and that I suggest is even worse than magic. Nothing pops out of nothing, from nothing, by nothing. To suggest otherwise is to be painfully irrational. Not even radioactive decay; or virtual particles which merely arise and disappearfrom fluctuations in the quantum vacuum—a veritable ‘sea’ of energy. So Being does not come from Nonbeing. Nothing spontaneously pops out of nothing, from nothing, by nothing. That is the full explication of the first premiss.

To refute the argument, you have to shoot down or falsify the premises. Otherwise, you'll arrive at the painful conclusion whether you want to or not.


Your objections came in two separate posts.

Post 1:

Now, let's examine your formulation of the Cosmological Argument;

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2) The Universe began to exist. 3) Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

The key to this argument is the phrase "begins to exist". But is this premise justified and is it true that whatever begins to exist has a cause? How do we come to know this? I submit that this premise is unjustified and cannot be accepted uncritically.

The only way premise 1 can be justified is by inductive inference, that is by observing that in this universe (of space and time) things that begin to exist tend to have a cause. But the conditions that obtains in this universe CANNOT be the same as the conditions that obtained in the pre-universe (note that I did not say before the universe as there existed no time before the time & space were created in the Big Bang event).

This premises falls foul of what is know as The Problem of Inductive Inference and as I have just shown above you seem to have drawn a pretty unsave conclusion by comparing two very dissimilar conditions.

There are other problems with the Cosmological Argument which I shall address later, but for now I would like to see how you deal with my objection.



Post 2:

On my earlier posts about the CA on this thread, I attempted to cast doubt on the reasonableness of making an inductive inference about the conditions that obtains in the present universe with respect to conditions that obtained "before" this universe came into being. I call this the Boundary Conditions refutation of the premiss that every thing that begins to exist has a cause. Another way to put this refutation is to ask whether the properties or attributes internal to the universe are the same as the properties of the universe. This remains to be demonstrated.

On this post, I intend to examine the concept of "Begin to Exist". What does it mean for something to begin to exist? I contend that the CA, especially this Kalam variety, has gotten a lot of mileage recent, thanks to William Lane Craig, mainly as a result of the general illiteracy of metaphysical and ontological matters by the general public. Granted, metaphysic and ontological analysis are very difficult subjects to contemplate and I claim no expert knowledge in these myself. But it should be obvious even to the most casual observer that the idea of "begin to exist" is not as trivial a matter, meriting no further explication, as seems on the surface. Advocates of Kalam CA, maybe knowingly exploit the public ignorance of metaphysics to sell to the public a defect argument.

Now, let's examine what exactly it means for something to "begin to exist". There are two ways one could examine this:

1) The general examination of "begin to exist" which relates to the ontology of things 2) The particular case of "begin to exist" as used in the CA, which relates to the theory of causation.
On this post, I shall only examine 1) and will look at 2) in a subsequent post. I shall start by asking the following questions:

i) Can anyone think of something that "begins to exist" and point out the exact time and space when the existence began?

ii) When does a painting begin to exist? Is it in the painter's head? Is it when the paint was manufactured? Is it when the canvass was stretched out on a wooden frame?

iii) When does a child begin to exist? Is it when her parents were themselves born, noting that her mother would have been born with near all her eggs in place? Is it when that particular sperm that fertilised her mothers eggs was made in her father's body? Is it when her parents had sex? Is it when the eggs and sperms fused? etc, etc?

iv) When did the sun begin to exist? Was it when the matter that accreted into the sun 5 billion years ago? Was it about 10 billion years ago when most of this matter was initially made?

I hope with the above question, it is possible to see that this is not a trivial questions with no trivial answers. As far as we know from science, things around us are simply forms of energy and things don't just "begin to exist", but matter/energy is transformed from one form of energy or state into another form of energy or state, invariably with no finite abrupt phase change time, but with slow imperceptible transitions.
I contend that premise 1 of the CA is not a cast-in-stone premise and should really not be accept as a logically unassailable premise.

Huxley


My Reply:

Hello Huxley: Sorry for the delay. Good to hear from you again.

In replying your first and second objections, there are different approaches that one could take, but I am going to make it a little bit conversational in style so as to help us to more closely focus the objection. It seems to me that after reading the Cosmological Argument (CA henceforth), you have decided to attack the first premiss. That is fine. But we have to ask ourselves, are you really attacking the first premiss as it was stated, or could you be addressing some basic but common misinterpretation of the first premiss? Furthermore, we have to ask ourselves whether the objections raised are anchored on sound plausible deductions.

[b]Before I continue, I have to remark that the CA is a simple syllogism that leads unapologetically to a deductive inference. One does not need to know the conclusion a priori; all that one has to do is follow the step-by-step premises to logically and rationally arrive at the conclusion. The CA or indeed any other form of syllogism can be refuted or falsified however if it can be demonstrated that one of the premises are false. In other words, the premises of syllogistic statements are designed in logical reasoning to aid us flesh out certain truths which one may be led to assert without much evidence. They are not inductive in nature but rather deductive. So, it is not like when someone writes out a simple syllogism, such a person is writing a Law in Physics or some other generally agreed upon law in some other fields of expertise. It becomes the duty of anyone opposing the syllogism to state and demonstrate why he disagrees with any of the premises. The burden of proof lies on anyone who wants to demonstrate that the premises are unsound (or that the conclusion is unsound) to show why he or she ought to be believed.
[/b]
Like I wrote elsewhere, “The first premiss is not to be understood as saying “everything has to be caused” instead it is saying that an entity needs a cause or explanation if and only if it has a beginning. To further expatiate on the first premiss, nothing comes out of nothing, from nothing, by nothing; or to simply state it “Being does not come from non-being.” So we are not talking of material causes here only but efficient causes as well. If things could really spontaneously pop into existence from nothing by nothing then there is no reason why any and everything doesn’t spontaneously pop into existence all the time.

So, there is no fear that while you are busy typing away at your pc, jackals could be popping into existence in the room next door and defiling the carpet or furniture. Indeed, there is no reason to believe that horses, watches, Darwin, erasers could pop into existence anywhere, anytime out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing. To argue against this will be to strain credulity. The first premise is more plausible than its negation. This is empirically confirmed constantly in science.”

So then you declare, in objection to the causal principle: “The only way premise 1 can be justified is by inductive inference, that is by observing that in this universe (of space and time) things that begin to exist tend to have a cause. But the conditions that obtains in this universe CANNOT be the same as the conditions that obtained in the pre-universe (note that I did not say before the universe as there existed no time before the time & space were created in the Big Bang event).”

But what exactly can you tell us about this pre-universe that you allude to? Do you know anything about this pre-universe that you declare rather emphatically cannot be subservient to the first premiss? Supposing I ask you on what basis one is to believe you when you talk about the pre-universe, what will your answer be? Current physics (science) cannot pronounce on that issue, so one is left with the conclusion that it is an empty assertion unless you can demonstrate efficiently why one should doubt a principle that is universally valid.

On your second submission, I studied the nature of your second response and it seems to me that it was just a simple misunderstanding of the first premise. I hope the explication given in this reply effectively addresses that. If you feel like they do not, I’d like for you to spell out exactly how they have disconfirmed the fuller and proper understanding of the first premise. The reason why I am returning that question back to you is because it is fairly obvious to me (and any informed person whether theist or atheist) that for each of those questions you asked, there are clear causes or explanations for them since they began to exist at a finite time in the past. If you claim not to have any good explanation for these questions, I can readily suggest very logical causes/explanations in my next reply.

But upon closer examination, it seems to me that the objections you raised in your second post are simply aimed to make the point that one cannot, with any degree of certainty, declare that things which exist in this world began to exist at a finite time in the past. That to me is patently wrong. There was a time in the historical past when the painting you alluded to was not in existence. If it begins to exist now, the first premise posits that it did not just pop into existence of nothing, from nothing and by nothing. It had to have had a cause or explanation for its very existence. The same applies to your question whether you are talking about a child, the earth or the sun. Indeed, the first premise is constantly confirmed in science regardless of the increasing size or configuration of matter. So the truth holds whether you are talking about a tiny marble ball, a basket ball, a ball the size of a car, the entire earth, the sun or other fireballs (stars), the entirety of a galaxy or the universe at the largest scale.

At this juncture, I will hastily point out that I do not think that your objections are trivial or that they deserve trivial answers. But what if you take the view that nothing can be said to BEGIN to exist, but that rather whatever we have in existence are just reconfigurations of previously existing matter? This is a great argument if one presupposes that matter itself is eternal. But are matter, space, time and energy which came into being (came into existence) at the creation/beginning of the universe eternal?

There are still many people who believe, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the universe was eternal in the past. This idea predominated for quite some time in academia. Unfortunately that is no longer the case now. There are powerful philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that there are no physically instantiated actual infinites. The universe (and matter by extension) had a beginning judging by its finitude in the past. Therefore, anyone who wants to believe that nothing in the universe could be said to have begun to exist on the assumption that whatever exists is merely is a reconfiguration of previously existing matter has to confront the veridicality of the finite and temporal boundary to matter’s existence itself.

Besides, it is not even a satisfactory answer to anyone seeking an explanation or the cause for the existence of any finite particulars to tell him or her not to probe any deeper because physically instantiated entities are simply reconfigurations of prior matter. Nevertheless, given this wobbly objection, the skeptic is then simply faced with the tougher task of explaining the origin of matter since we both agree that matter is a contingent entity and is furthermore, not eternal in the past. Such a person may have to start appealing to some unknown and empirically unverifiable Physics. Since such a person cannot say that the universe did not begin to exist (the existence of which brought into existence all matter, space, time and energy), such a person is then left with the deeply radical, irrational and implausible option of declaring without any evidence that the Universe created itself out of nothing uncaused or that it simply popped out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing. That, I submit, is worse than magic.

It is only the looming inference to theism, I suspect, that will make any atheist abandon overwhelming logic and scientific evidence to make special appeals to an unconfirmed, deeply implausible prior state of affairs. Such equivocations--such remorseless but baseless skepticism is a palpable double standard evident in atheists for we do not witness such empty contrarian speculations or dogmatic skepticism when the theory of evolution, for instance, is under consideration.

Cheers.

Sorry for the delay Huxley. Man must whack, no be so? Let us consider your reply.

Prizm: Notice that I said, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause or explanation" and not “everything that begins to exist has a cause or explanation”. I said that because I know that sometimes dogmatic atheists may start to quibble with the definitions of even simple words like "something" "everything" etc in a manner that they wouldn't even dream of doing in the real world.  Just take a look at the thread to see how some have even started asking for the meaning of "something" or "nothing". Can anyone reasonably conclude that the persons asking such questions are conspicuously mired in ambiguity when these terms are used? Can it be said that they have no conception of what it means to say that there is "something" or "nothing"? It kind of reminds one of the way Bill Clinton reputedly asked for what the word 'is' really meant during his Monica Lewinsky sex  scandal investigation. Who really has the time or the desire for such inconsequential hair-splitting?

Then you replied:

huxley:

Thankz for the correction - I erred to have miss-quoted you and I understand your zeal for such pedantry as any productive debate can bearly get off the ground if there is ambiguity in the substantive terms, words or notions of the questions at hand.

But you do not seem to want to practise what you preach.  You call me to task for using the word "Everything"  instead of "Whatever, yet you evince cavalier interest to some of the core terms of the question. 

Deep Sight formulated a line of arguments, using the words "Something" & "Nothing" along some pseudo-logical reasoning.  He ascribed the number zero to "Nothing" and non-zero to "Something".  Now, is this a line of argumentation that you agree with?  How could we even proceed with this line of reasoning when no definition of the terms has been made?

Although there are many terms, notions or concept that we may be content with from an everyday, common-sense perspective, when doing philosophical debate we must be wary of that approach, as I am sure you will apreciate.  We must ensure that the terms or concept we use convey exactly the meaning we intend - hence the necessity for precise defintions.

Incidentally I notice early just how you were calling him on his being loose with his argumentation; 

[size=14pt]What a shame that you do not take your own medication.[/size]

I am not exactly sure why you seem peeved by the fact that I drew your attention to the nuances of my statement. As far as I am concerned, the statement “Everything that begins to exist has a cause or explanation” can stand in lieu of what I actually said and I would not have a problem with that statement. I merely amplified my nuanced statement to forestall a retort that would lead to red herrings or unprofitable hairsplitting. So I must respectfully disagree with your characterization of that effort on my part as pedantic. I have no desire for the sort of pointless exchanges where discussants intentionally strive as it were to misunderstand each other. And sadly, you have been guilty of this severally. One might conclude based on your questions and assertions that you have no real desire for an honest exchange of ideas – just unvarnished dogmatic skepticism. If your complaint is that some of the terms used are not clear, I suppose a brief research on your part, or an honest request for clarification will help. If your strategy is to dig in your heels and quibble over every word or sentence when they undercut some of your arguments or positions, then I am sorry to inform you that I have no stomach for that sort of merry-go-round. Anybody can sit in his/her easy chair and play the role of the unflinching skeptic.

Prizm: Now to come to this question, the statement "Whatever begins to exist has a cause or an explanation" is a properly basic statement about existence which is confirmed rationally, philosophically, logically, scientifically or otherwise. It is like saying "there is an external world (to myself) which exists".

For example, if I allege that you are simply a brain connected by electrodes in a vat stimulated by some mad scientist somewhere; OR that you are a character existing in a virtual reality like the Matrix, and therefore that you are not real, there is no way, you can get out of your sense organs to confirm the validity and reliability of your sense organ data. Think about it: Assuming I made that allegation and you countered with the reply that you can sense the external world, then what sort of answers would you give when I charge that you are simply wired in this vat or virtual reality to perceive the vat or virtual reality as real? How can you prove without/outside your sensory data the validity or reliability of sense data to be able to refute my allegation? It is just not possible. That doesn't mean that you begin to doubt the existence of the external world, does it? I hope not. At any rate, it is not like I am saying that the statement is some scientific law which you have to swallow whole and entire - it is a premise which has been demonstrated true without fail.

You replied with this:

huxley:
No, I do NOT agree.  This premise is not a priori knowledge and there are many empirical facts that belies this premise.  By the way, what do you mean by CAUSE or CAUSATION? And in view of you definition of causation, can you explain what causes the following events:

1)  The decay of a radioactive nucleus

What exactly is your objection here? Have I argued that the premise is a prior[/i]i? This is one of those situations where you strive to misunderstand what has been said. If you remember, I dealt with exactly this objection in my reply to your objection to the Cosmological Argument. Some people may feel that the first premise “Whatever begins to exist has a cause or explanation” is reasonably a priori knowledge and I have no problem with that. But let us grant that it is [i]a posteriori knowledge to satisfy you. That little distinction on your part totally aligns with the way I see it and it is the way I want you to consider the premise.

Nevertheless that minute distinction does not obviate or undercut the first premise at all. So when you say that there are many empirical facts that do so, I’ll have to strongly disagree with you and ask for your evidence. Now, it seems to me that you are trying to undermine the first premise of the Cosmological Argument by talking about radioactive decay? Am I right?

Here’s how we are going to do this. Rather than asking me what I mean by “cause”, I’ll allow you to explain what Radioactive decay is and how it supposedly subverts the first premise. The reason why I am doing it this way is because I want this to be conversational in nature. You don’t get to simply assert that Radioactive Decay belies the premise. To me this is the main crux of this entire post. Besides, I do not want a situation where I demonstrate initially that the premise is intact only for you to recline in your comfortable skeptical chair to declare it some unjustified adhoc assertion. So, here’s your opportunity to take a crack at physics to show us that Radioactive Decay destroys the first premise. It may be that this little exercise may help to fully illuminate the depth and scope of the first premise though as I said previously, it has been constantly confirmed philosophically and scientifically.

huxley:
I asked: "You say that God transcends the universe, etc, etc, .  How did you come to know this?   It is possible for an entity that transcends the universe and has no spatial, material or temporal component  to inter-act with material components of that universe?   By what mechanism does such inter-action occur?"

And I responded with the following:

Prizm: That is what it means to talk about necessary beings/entities. Things that exist out of a necessity of their own nature are timeless, spaceless, immaterial and uncaused. To say this is to say that these necessary entities transcend the universe. This is not a difficult thing to understand. Once again, if you remember the Cosmological Argument, as I laid it out, these inferences or deductions are unmistakably subsequent from the premises. One doesn't even have to appeal to any special knowledge or revelation here. If you disagree with that premise, you are then faced with the task of demonstrating with unassailable evidence any assertion of yours that refutes a premise that is already painfully obvious with boring consistency and tiresome repetitiveness.

Now, assuming that we are settled on "Contingent vs Necessary" entities, you may want to ask why God is by that definition able to interact with the universe

Then you answered with this:

huxley:
You seem to be making unjustified and adhoc assertion.  How is the concept of contingency/necessity connected with the question I asked.  I asked by what mechanism was a transcendent being capable of inter-acting with the universe. 

You have a habit of brandishing some philosophical concepts (such as contingency and necessity) about without making any connections between your arguments.  Can you explain how a NECESSARY transcendent disembodied being inter-acts with a physical universe?  BY WHAT MECHANISM?

I am not exactly sure what you are asking me here. When you asked how one knows that a necessary entity (like God) transcends the universe, I gave my answer. I also contrasted it with another type of necessary entity like numbers.

At any rate, I may be wrong, but it seems that you are asking me the mechanism or physics by which God (here you can substitute the word ‘God’ with any appropriate synonym for this necessary first mover) created the universe. In other words, you are asking me to speak on exactly how God created ex nihilo. If this is what you are asking, the answer is that I don’t know and no one can possibly know how this supernatural event happened. There is no physics for this event. No one is equipped to pronounce on how such a metaphysical event occurred. Our human physics can only probe or go back to the first few moments after this event. There is a limit to what we can actually postulate or verify scientifically because our contemporary physics break down at certain barriers. So we may need a whole new physics to probe even further than we currently know.

But here’s a point to consider: no matter what advances we make, there is no chance that we can ever get to a model that is eternal in the past. Here I am reminded of how nebulous or metaphysical some of these new areas in physics like the String Theory are—there is always the specter of a cosmic beginning even if we can get ourselves to not only picture deeply counterintuitive things like 11 dimensional hyperspace but to actually show that it exists. In the end, there are boundaries even to the string theory model assuming we decide that it successfully unifies all fundamental physical interactions. And so no physics could speak about what happens in that transcendental domain.

Physics picks up and makes sense only after the universe is created along with it every physical quantity or phenomena.  Indeed the way I see it, the theories or the models of the Origin of the Universe can indeed be revised as time goes on, but in any and all revisions, there is no chance or possibility that any viable and experimentally verifiable model will be shown to have been eternal in the past. So, you can push back the origin of the Universe as far as you want, but you will always be confronted with the specter of a cosmic beginning. That cosmic beginning cries out for an explanation. This is where, as I have demonstrated over and over again, the necessary existence of God becomes very evident. So, the possible existence of multiple universes in some Mother Universe does not even affect the argument. Nevertheless, I am by no means dogmatically wedded to any model. We’ll go with where the evidence points.

Prizm: That is a very good question.  But before one gets to that point, there has to be some agreement that God or at least something like God exists. I am afraid, with you, we are not there yet. So we have to keep the conversation right at the fore--which is whether a God exists or not. You are the one stating the proposition that God does not exist, remember? I am still waiting for some other counterargument to the Cosmological Argument that we were engaged in elsewhere.

Then you replied with:

huxley:
This is an extremely bizarre way to argue.  Remember that it is the theist that is making the POSITIVE claim that a God exists.  So the onus is on the theist to present the evidence for his God.  All the atheist need do is examine such evidence as presented by the theist and see if they make sense in the light of our knowledge of the nature of reality. For this the atheist wil surmon succor from sciences, logic mathematics philosophy, etc, etc, as deemed fit.

So it make no sense for me to accept the existence of an entity whose very nature and existence is at question before you can advance your arguments.  This is back-to-front argumentation - it would be tantamount to accepting the guilty of a defendant before seeking to prove him quilty.

First of all, this assumption is Wrong. This is a burden of proof fallacy on your part. But before I show how that is the case, allow me to briefly explain the terms theist, atheist and agnostic. An agnostic is one who confesses ignorance on the question of whether God exists or not. An agnostic therefore makes no claims on whether God exists or not. Theists and atheists on the other hand, make knowledge claims about the existence or non-existence of God. An atheist maintains that a God does not exist while a theist maintains that a God exists. The only party that has the luxury of sitting complacently to weigh the evidence on both sides of this issue is the agnostic. Now, if an agnostic is sufficiently persuaded, he may decide that some kind of God exists even if he does not think that his feeble human reason can fully understand that God. He becomes an agnostic theist. On the other hand, there are equally agnostic atheists and they maintain that not only does God not exist, if such a thing as God did in fact exist, that God cannot be accessed by human reason.

With the term atheist defined as I did, you can see that I do not subscribe to some newly revised definition of atheism which merely seeks to present atheism as “the absence of belief in the existence of God.” This loose redefinition absolves the atheist of a responsibility or burden in any discussion and squarely puts all the responsibility on the theist. By this definition then, an atheist becomes synonymous with non-theist - a broad term which would include not just traditional/strong Atheists but Agnostics and Verificationists.

As far as I am concerned this redefinition trivializes the discourse because by this definition, atheism ceases to be a viewpoint. It becomes a psychological state which is shared by people who hold a wide range of views or no views at all. With this definition, babies who hold no opinion on the issue would also have to be called atheists; people who suffer some deep and irreversible brain damage will automatically have to be reclassified atheists since they have no demonstrable belief or opinion on the matter. We can even stretch that definition to include your pets - suddenly your pets would qualify as atheists since they have no belief in the existence of God. Consequently a theist may equally loosely define theism as “the belief in the existence of God” and be equally absolved of any responsibility or confirmatory burden. The result is that everyone will sit tight in their domain of belief or disbelief and no God debates/discussions will ever arise; neither will any answers arise.

For there to be the sort of discussions that have raged for centuries on whether God exists or not, we have to understand that the atheist is not just stating some innocuous absence of a belief in the existence of God, but he is making a  positive knowledge claim that a God as a matter fact doesn’t exist. He needs to provide justification for that position.

For example, I do not know whether extraterrestrials exist or not. I have not visited all of the vastness of the universe to be able to say with any degree of confidence that there are no aliens in Andromeda or anywhere else. As far as extraterrestrials are concerned, I am agnostic about their existence or non-existence. They may or may not exist and I’ll openly confess my ignorance on that matter. However, there might be people who are deeply convinced that there are extraterrestrials and may have good reasons for such a conviction. Equally, there are people who are convinced that there are no such things as extraterrestrials. In any discussion on whether extraterrestrials exist or not, both sides which affirm or deny the existence of extraterrestrials have to present good arguments why their side should be believed. As an agnostic, all I get to do is weigh the evidence. In the end, I may be unconvinced that extraterrestrials exist OR I could be convinced that they do exist even if before that point, I have never actually witnessed an extraterrestrial. Before this can happen though, I have to be willing and receptive to the evidence offered for or against. If I am dogmatically set against one side of the discussion then it may be that no countervailing evidence from that side will convince me.

A person who posits that extraterrestrials do not exist cannot say that the inability of the other side to show evidence that would suggest the existence of an extraterrestrial is a positive proof of his own claim that extraterrestrials do not exist. That would be logically fallacious. All this would show in this example is that the person proposing that extraterrestrials exist has not proven his own case or has not shown evidence that would strongly suggest so – NOT that the denier of the proposition has been proven right! From the denier of the proposition, we need to hear a positive case that would suggest that their side is to be believed. Such a person, for example, may provide authoritative evidence of having traversed the entire universe and seeing no evidence of such extraterrestrials. In the absence of such strong positive disconfirming evidence, anyone is still completely within his rational rights to believe in the existence of extraterrestrials.

Thus, we are not in some law court where a person is assumed innocent if the prosecution cannot demonstrate some palpable guilt. This is more or less an academic exercise and each side of this conversational divide has to show with positive reasons why their side ought to be believed. Each side in essence has to build up a case that argues for the truthfulness of their knowledge claims. It is utterly fallacious therefore to think that in this scenario, you bear no responsibility or burden of proof for adopting your position, and as such, you can claim the possible lack of evidence for theistic positions as positive proof of atheistic positions. This false reasoning simply reduces to a fundamental presumption of atheism because “Absence of evidence” [/b]is not [b]“Evidence of Absence”.

So it is entirely possible for instance for a theist not to be able to present any proof at all for his position. Nevertheless, it would be deeply illogical to assume that that necessarily proves the assertions or positions of the atheist.  Atheism is not the default position here. The default position is agnosticism, a confession of nescience, which essentially says “I don’t know whether God exists or whether God does not exist”.

You have to demonstrate or show why any reasonable person has to conclude with you that God does not exist. You have to make your case; the theist has to make his case: and reasonable people can judge for themselves. So, in this exercise, you have to be willing and ready to bear your own burden of the argument. Anyone can afford to sit comfortably in his/her easy chair and play the role of the implacable skeptic.

huxley:
Isn't this discussion part of the (Kalam) Cosmological Argument (KCA)?  I hope you remember that I have issues with the very premise of the KCA and my response to your posts and to Deep Sight's have been about the CA.   In fact, I would rather we discuss it here, as it stands to benefit more people interested in such matters, rather than moving the discussion to your private website with only a small audience of people.

I gave a reply to the issues you raised. But you may be right about the fact that this discussion need not be private. On that basis, I’ll repost the Cosmological Argument, your objections and my reply here as well.

Prizm: You see, the definition of God is that God is a transcendental unembodied mind. A mind has attributes like freewill, intelligence, reasoning, etc. This is what it means to say that God is a person or is personal - He can freely choose to create or not. As an incorporeal being/mind, he has no physically complex parts; he is NOT said to be composed of an infinite number of finite particulars. He is just a mind--remarkably simple. But as a mind, he is capable of complex thoughts. As a matter of fact, his attributes are just infinite and superlative extensions of our own limited personal attributes - and thus he is omniscient, he is the embodiment of the loftiest logic and power, and exists beyond time, space and matter. Being personal does not mean that he has physical human parts or limitation. Note that this in no way limits a being that transcends all physical reality – he is a self-conscious, rational, necessary and superlative being; and the efficient cause of the universe or physical reality.

Then you replied with:

huxley:
Now, an epistemological question.  You said God is "a transcendental unembodied mind. A mind has attributes like freewill, intelligence, reasoning, etc. This is what it means to say that God is a person or is personal - He can freely choose to create or not. As an incorporeal being/mind, he has no physically complex parts;"

How did you come to know this?  By what mechanism did this transcendent being (with no spatial, material or temporal component) inter-act with you (or other material humans) such that you ended up with this knowledge?

This is evident from the Cosmological Argument which is just one of a family of arguments that strongly suggest that a God exists. So, to answer your question loosely, this knowledge is apparent from pure reason alone based on the full understanding and appreciation of the Cosmological Argument. I hope this is not becoming tedious. One does not necessarily need the transcendent or necessary entity to interact with him or her first before gaining this knowledge or insight. Nevertheless, I am not going to deny the existential reality of personal experiences or revelation (an appeal to knowledge that is anathema to atheists and naturalists). So, on the strength of reason alone, one can deduce or infer the existence of this necessary entity. For a better and closer understanding and appreciation of God, one has to be willing and open to the evidence that God does exist. Perhaps, by so doing would such an honest seeker come to a deeper awareness.

huxley:
How do you know God has a mind but no body?  Which rules or laws are contravene if god were to have a body?  (Note that I am not gonna insist that all minds MUST reside in a body)

If God had a body, he’ll merely be a subset of this universe and therefore logically he ceases to be a necessary entity. In other words, he would not even qualify for the name God. To have a body is to have finite parts or to be composed of matter, and necessary entities do not possess finite physically instantiated particulars. Does it make the issue simpler if instead of the word ‘mind’ you substituted the word ‘intelligence’?

As an omnipotent being however, he can interact and directly impact the physical realm/universe. So I see no logical inconsistency in saying that God for example, to show himself in the universe, may temporarily assume some material form. I see no logical inconsistency also in saying that after establishing the laws and properties of the universe or natural realm, a God that transcends the universe may from time to time directly impact it. Such interventions would appropriately be supernatural interventions since by definition, a supernatural event is not simply an ‘implausible’, ‘impossible’ or counter-intuitive event, BUT an event that in its proper context cannot be adequately explained by a simplistic recourse to naturalistic explanations.

Let us carry out this thought experiment.

Imagine a 2 dimensional universe. Take a piece of paper for example, and place it on the table. Draw some fishes on that piece of paper to represent intelligent creatures living in this 2-dimensional universe. So these creatures can only exist in a plane. They can swim forwards, backwards and side to side on this xy-plane. Just like we cannot possibly imagine 5-dimensional space, these 2-dimensional creatures cannot comprehend 3-dimensional space. For example, you cannot imagine a curved 2-dimensional space. Any time you imagine curved 2-D space, you are imagining 2-dimensional surface floating around in three dimensions – you will inevitably trespass in the third dimension. 

Supposing you were watching these creatures swimming around and having intelligent discussions, you may note for example that they’ll never have any conception of the third dimension. They will never understand the concept of “up” or “down”. As far as some of these 2-dimensional creatures are concerned, there is no unfathomable third dimensional space and thus there can be no powerful dweller in that third dimensional space.

As the creator of this 2-dimensional universe, you’ll be tickled pink at their reasoning. You exist independently of the fact that these creatures can never approach or comprehend your existential dimension. The fact that you transcend 2-D space means that the creatures living in the 2-D reality you created cannot describe you in 2-D terms; in 2-D physics. You have some attributes of the 2-D dimension that you created, but altogether you cannot be analyzed with very limited 2-D worldview.

Does this mean that you cannot directly interact or impact this 2-dimensional reality? Of course not. You could stay at your table for instance detached and oblivious of the work of your hands. But if you do decide to interact or impact this reality, it is very important to realize that such an event would only be perceived in a 2-D world with a 2-D understanding. So if you take a finger and put it directly unto this 2-D space, you’ll be perceived in the 2-D world, won’t you? Of course you will. Will the 2-D creatures perceiving your finger thrust in their universe understand the three-dimensional spatial attribute of your finger? Definitely not. In choosing to do so, you’ll be intentionally interacting or impacting that world in ways that might even be deemed natural (natural to this 2-D universe). So in that example your finger will simply be perceived by these 2-D creatures as another entity in the xy-plane.


In all of these endless internet debates, the atheist has yet to present a convincing case to argue for the merits of his or her position. You have not presented any evidence or positive rational argument which one would consider and inescapably arrive at your conclusions. I suspect that the reason for this is that you realize that you cannot sustain your own fair share of the burden in this discourse. Therefore, you are essentially reduced to the role of a nitpicker who has simply refused to be convinced by any undercutting theocentric evidence.

Can the atheist then get away by anchoring his disbelief in God by pointing at the different perceptions of God/gods that richly dot the theistic terrain? Can he essentially say that the multiplicity of deities present in the theistic landscape somehow logically proves that there is no God? Certainly not – the suggestion is absurd. I would remind such an atheist to leave the disagreements on the nature and attributes of God to the theists as such disagreements do not enhance or illuminate his position at all. The atheist’s job in any discussion is to show that God does not exist.

For example, if a certain cup under examination has a liquid in it, people can argue whether the liquid is water or poison (not water). They essentially agree that there is a cup with some liquid in it but they may be in disagreement over the nature or attribute of the liquid in the cup. This disagreement should not concern someone who maintains that there is no cup to start with.

Can the atheist then get away by splitting hairs with the theist on whether God is personal and/or conscious or not? Well, before anyone has to start showing you whether God can be considered personal or not, one has to first of all convince you that a God exists. This means that you have to first concede to the arguments for a transcendental being. Thus far, my position is that you have not refuted the Cosmological Argument. At any rate, I am not pressing for some concession. I am willing to live with the fact that for some atheists, there is a degree of inflexibility and resistance that one may not be able to overcome by pure reasoning alone. Only when you are convinced that such a being exists can you reasonably discuss or argue about the personal or impersonal nature of such a being. For example, if you do not believe that dinosaurs ever existed, you have no grounds for objecting to some or any attributional claims about dinosaurs. As far as the topic of dinosaurs is concerned, by your original position, you should be nescient. It will be the height of absurdity, for example, to assert or insist that dinosaurs lack a certain proposed attribute and that, by some weird logic, is evidence that dinosaurs never existed.

huxley:
How do you come to know that "Everything that begins to exist has a cause or an explanation"?   How did you come to this knowledge?

Notice that I said, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause or explanation" and not “everything that begins to exist has a cause or explanation”. I said that because I know that sometimes dogmatic atheists may start to quibble with the definitions of even simple words like "something" "everything" etc in a manner that they wouldn't even dream of doing in the real world.  Just take a look at the thread to see how some have even started asking for the meaning of "something" or "nothing". Can anyone reasonably conclude that the persons asking such questions are conspicuously mired in ambiguity when these terms are used? Can it be said that they have no conception of what it means to say that there is "something" or "nothing"? It kind of reminds one of the way Bill Clinton reputedly asked for what the word 'is' really meant during his Monica Lewinsky sex  scandal investigation. Who really has the time or the desire for such inconsequential hair-splitting?

Now to come to this question, the statement "Whatever begins to exist has a cause or an explanation" is a properly basic statement about existence [/b]which is confirmed rationally, philosophically, logically, scientifically or otherwise. It is like saying "there is an external world (to myself) which exists".

For example, if I allege that you are simply a brain connected by electrodes in a vat stimulated by some mad scientist somewhere; OR that you are a character existing in a virtual reality like the Matrix, and [b]therefore that you are not real, there is no way, you can get out of your sense organs to confirm the validity and reliability of your sense organ data. Think about it: Assuming I made that allegation and you countered with the reply that you can sense the external world, then what sort of answers would you give when I charge that you are simply wired in this vat or virtual reality to perceive the vat or virtual reality as real? How can you prove without/outside your sensory data the validity or reliability of sense data to be able to refute my allegation? It is just not possible. That doesn't mean that you begin to doubt the existence of the external world, does it? I hope not. At any rate, it is not like I am saying that the statement is some scientific law which you have to swallow whole and entire - it is a premise which has been demonstrated true without fail.

Nevertheless, you can disagree with that premise. You can posit, at a serious penalty to your own rationality, that the statement is not true. You are then faced with the insurmountable task of showing the evidence that your position is true. Do you want to try?

huxley:
You say that God transcends the universe, etc, etc, .  How did you come to know this?   It is possible for an entity that transcends the universe and has no spatial, material or temporal component  to inter-act with material components of that universe?   By what mechanism does such inter-action occur?

That is what it means to talk about necessary beings/entities. Things that exist out of a necessity of their own nature are timeless, spaceless, immaterial and uncaused. To say this is to say that these necessary entities transcend the universe. This is not a difficult thing to understand. Once again, if you remember the Cosmological Argument, as I laid it out, these inferences or deductions are unmistakably subsequent from the premises. One doesn't even have to appeal to any special knowledge or revelation here. If you disagree with that premise, you are then faced with the task of demonstrating with unassailable evidence any assertion of yours that refutes a premise that is already painfully obvious with boring consistency and tiresome repetitiveness.

Now, assuming that we are settled on "Contingent vs Necessary" entities, you may want to ask why God is by that definition able to interact with the universe.

That is a very good question.  But before one gets to that point, there has to be some agreement that God or at least something like God exists. I am afraid, with you, we are not there yet. So we have to keep the conversation right at the fore--which is whether a God exists or not. You are the one stating the proposition that God does not exist, remember? I am still waiting for some other counterargument to the Cosmological Argument that we were engaged in elsewhere.

You see, the definition of God is that God is a transcendental unembodied mind. A mind has attributes like freewill, intelligence, reasoning, etc. This is what it means to say that God is a person or is personal - He can freely choose to create or not. As an incorporeal being/mind, he has no physically complex parts; he is NOT said to be composed of an infinite number of finite particulars. He is just a mind--remarkably simple. But as a mind, he is capable of complex thoughts. As a matter of fact, his attributes are just infinite and superlative extensions of our own limited personal attributes - and thus he is omniscient, he is the embodiment of the loftiest logic and power, and exists beyond time, space and matter. Being personal does not mean that he has physical human parts or limitation. Note that this in no way limits a being that transcends all physical reality – he is a self-conscious, rational, necessary and superlative being; and the efficient cause of the universe or physical reality.

Numbers, on the other hand, though necessary (i.e. not contingent), are causally effete. They do not and cannot stand in causal relations. Another way to say this, is to say they are causally inert and cannot cause or create anything.

I have mentioned somewhere before that this definition of God is independent of the name God. So to answer Krayola, the God concept does not depend on the word ‘God’ for its validity. If you understand the Cosmological Argument and arrive at its logical and inescapable deduction, it shouldn’t matter whether you call that Uncaused Cause by the name God or not. God is simply what the theists call that reality. You can call it “The Primordial Peculiarity”, “The First Mover”, “The Uncaused Cause”, “Z1 Alpha 3 Q”, “tomtom”, or anything else that suits your fancy but which in its proper use conveys the adequate infinite and transcendental attributes of such a necessary being.

Sometimes, people who call themselves theists, or who attempt to defend a theistic worldview make the mistake of not being very precise with their statements. One of the areas that shows this inattention to language is in statements about the metaphysical existence of God.

When an atheist asks a question like "If God is something, then from what "something" did God come from?", it shows that such an atheist is very attentive and has caught a theist flatfooted because such a theist has said something like "everything has a cause" or "for anything to exist, there must be a cause".

Once again, the way to say it, and which no serious theist should ever make the mistake of misrepresenting is:

"Whatever begins to exist has a cause or explanation".

By this statement, no sensible atheist who has understood the premise will begin to ask "what caused God?" or "from what something did God come from?" etc.

The reason is fairly obvious: God is not said to have begun to exist. In other words, we are talking about entities which exist necessarily and are not contingent - they exist by a necessity of their own selves. These necessary entities  did not begin to exist at any finite time in the past. It is useful to remember that this was the way atheists thought about the universe (well at least until that was debunked). To ask what caused God is to presuppose that God started to exist at some point and thus needed a cause or explanation.  It is rather amusing how a point so simple continues to elude people here. You can only ask "what caused" or "what came before" type questions of things which began to exist at a finite time in the past. You cannot ask that of things which exist by necessity and not by contingency. The two examples that are clear to me would be God (an unembodied mind) and numbers. These entities transcend the physical realm and thus have no material, temporal or spatial component.

After we have established that the universe is not eternal but started to exist a finite time in the past, the explanation for the cause of the universe has to be something which is spaceless, timeless and immaterial for space, time and matter came into existence with the Big Bang or with the universe.  God, by definition, transcends the universe and as such has no spatial, material or temporal component. The much we can do in cosmology is investigate the earliest moments of this Big Bang creation - and how the rest has fallen into place since this supernatural act of creation since contemporary physics breaks down at a certain point when you start extrapolating back in time.

Indeed, if one is to follow astrophysics and cosmology carefully, the universe was created out of literal nothingness (which is to say that there was no material substance from which the universe was created).  This remarkable insight can lead any serious seeker of the truth to the fact that there is a God even if it doesn't lead such a person to understand the way in which that God actually created ex nihilo. All physical phenomena came into existence with the creation of the universe and that includes space, time, matter, energy, dark matter, dark energy, gravitation, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and a number of initial conditions and constants which were remarkably fine-tuned for the universe to have continued expanding instead of recollapsing. As a matter of fact, that large scale structures like planets, stars or galaxies appear at all in the universe seems to have been a function of this remarkable fine-tuning.

But of course there are other theories which are being worked on that aim to show that the Big Bang is not the absolute beginning. These theories are welcome as well. Apart from the fact that many of these theories have not been proven, observed and in some cases cannot even be falsified there is the additional headache that these theories make no predictions not to talk about predictions which there is the faintest glimmer of hope that they can be scientifically discovered.  But the biggest worry that some of these models have is that even if one is to grant that the Standard Big Bang model is not the absolute beginning, there is still the uncomfortable fact that none of these other alternatives can be proven to be eternal in the past. One still has to confront the specter of a cosmic beginning. It is no wonder that people of the hard core sciences like Physics are seldom as fanatically atheistic as people of the softer sciences like evolutionary biology.

Krayola2:

I thought those were products of society?. . .     

I don't understand what u mean

Thanks for asking a question when you didn't understand a comment instead of posting some ridiculous red herring disguised to look like some sensible rebuttal.

Let me explain it in very simple terms.

Have you ever run into people who say something like "If something is not immediately evident to my five senses, it is not real and should not be believed"? or "The only reality I can accept is that reality that is  empirically observable" or something like "Reality is simply something that is physical and can be directly apprehended by the 5 sense organs" or something like "If you cannot know or prove something with your 5 senses then that thing is just meaningless and has no truth value"?

My point is that people who make such claims do not live their lives as though they actually believed the full import of that statement. For there are a vast number of situations where human beings act and behave on presuppositions and assumptions that we are very rational to believe but which are not empirically testable. How for example do such people deal with ethical truths, aesthetic truths, or moral truths? As a matter of fact, even science itself (which they'd always want to fall back on ) works on lots of assumptions that have not been explicitly observed or proven. Such people who adopt these positions (Verificationists) cannot function much in society for their attitude is inimical to science itself and commonsense. On the whole, this philosophical Verificationism is self-referentially incoherent for it doesn't take much to figure out that any statement of Verificationist principles i[b]s by its very nature incapable of being empirically observed.[/b]

Deep Sight:

Have you considered exploring with your opponents what philosophical persuasion underlies their positions? I find it interesting for example that you would want to discuss with strict Verificationists or naturalists on a subject matter that a) they may have a poor conception of or b) choose not to accept.

How do you think that an atheist who believes God does not exist on the grounds that God is not empirically testable will agree with your insistence on the perfectly rational metaphysical existence of ethical values, moral values, or aesthetic values - none of which is empirically verifiable? They cannot live their lives on the bald assumption that there is no ontological existence of these abstract realms but if you press the matter, a great many will flatly deny the existence of such. It helps to know what philosophy undergirds some of your opponent's pronouncements so as to know what manner of opposition you have.

There are those who want an honest exchange of information and there are those who are atheists because it is the fashionable thing on internet fora and universities.

toneyb:

This is ridiculous and a complete BS. Christians believe in a logical god, and only excuse him from logic in specific instances to allow themselves to hold conflicting ideas at the same time thats all to this sorry of an excuse.  The claim that "God is not bound by our human logic" comes up every so often. The claim that god somehow supersedes logic is usually invoked as a defense for the so-called "paradoxes of christianity for example" Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. God is perfectly just and perfectly merciful who acts like a father figure to all christians as a source of protection but still allows christians to suffer unnecessarily while doing nothing no protect or help them from their sufferings. God is one, yet God is three different entities. God planned everything out from the beginning, yet everyone has free will, and therefore it's your fault if you suffer or if natural disasters comes and kill people off for no reason at all. The Bible has plenary inspiration, yet it was written by human authors who wrote from their own limited perspective. And on and on.

The very ridiculous claim that the christian god transcends our understanding of deduction is thrown out as a conversation-ending bald assertion ONLY when contradictory doctrines come into conflict. It essentially says "I'm right so shut up." or "I don't have to play by your rules at all." The idea that God is not bound by logic is frequently stated more subtly like "Well, it's just a mystery" or "Who are YOU to question God?"  Christians come up with these silly excuses ONLY when they have their backs against the wall and try to explain away or dance around some christian claims that do not make sense at all or can not stand up to basic scrutiny other wise LOGIC is the ONLY thing christians use when talking about their god and what he wants from people, when they are faced with ridiculous assertions of the christian faith that can not be supported at all they come up with the "god's ways are not human ways" forgetting that the same god was written to have said that "come let us REASON TOGETHER" at some point in the bible. So how can you reason together with an entity who you can never understand by logic since reasoning involves logic alone?

I do not know of christians who are willing to follow the claim that their god is not bound by logic to its "logical" conclusion: If God is not bound by logic, then all of the rules of deduction go out the window. One of the most basic rules of logic is the law of non-contradiction, that A != ~A. If you throw that idea out the window, you have basically destroyed the idea of Truth, and  you can say anything that you want to say about god. If  your god is not bound by logic, then you can say that your god both exists, and does not exist at the same time. You can say, without blinking, that your god is sublimely good, yet your god is also the most evil being that ever has existed. If you say your god is not bound by logic, then what's to stop you from saying that Jesus was both god and not god, that Christianity is both true and a lie?

I don't know what these theists you were listening to meant to say but sometimes, language can be a barrier to effective communication.

The theist does not believe in an irrational or non-rational God. Therefore if you heard a theist say that "God is not bound by logic", I'll agree with you that in a given understanding of that expression, one should have no business concerning oneself with a divine that is posited to be illogical, irrational or perhaps non-rational.  I think that is at best, a poor choice of words. Why indeed should one bother with some entity which is alleged to be nonsensical?

But what if this is not what the theist meant by that statement? The mainstream position of theists on God is that God is an unembodied mind (incorporeal), omniscient, transcends the bounds of space of time and that he does not act in ways that contradict his very own nature. On that view, God is not deemed irrational or as "not bound by logic", but indeed God is posited as the embodiment of the loftiest and highest logic. As the very embodiment of superlative logic, he cannot act in ways that contradict his very own logical nature and thus does not flout the Laws of Logic (the law of non-contradiction in your example).

So the theist you were talking to probably meant to say that "God transcends human logic" - not that God is illogical or antithetical to reason or some other ill-conceived caricature. The theist probably wanted to express the infinitesimal scope of human reasoning or mentation when compared to God's. Like I said elsewhere, theists are not philosophical Verificationists; they can and do appeal to other inferences that are not strictly naturalistic or empirical.

Pastor AIO:
Just one thing I feel the need to say, although you might not find it relevant, for me it is a real sticking point.  And that is that Mathematics and Physics are totally different subjects.   Yes physics relies heavily on mathematics but they are still very different.  Physics is the study of the world, the physical world and the laws of how it operates.  Mathematics uses abstractions and studies the laws of how these abstract items interact.  Mathematical discoveries do not need to be evidenced in nature. 
I'm bringing this up because of the question of whether 0 plus 0 equals 0 is true everywhere in the universe.  Zero, the number, is an abstraction and does not exist in the physical universe.  Capisce?

I agree with this. A lot of the pronouncements on the whole question of Logic or Mathematics that I have read here are simply underwhelming.

0 + 0=0 is a mathematical fact that is independent of human beings or human reasoning. This is to say that this holds true anywhere in this universe whether or not there are human beings to apprehend a realm of numbers or to do the computation. Numbers in much the same way as  Properties, Relations, Number Sets, Propositions, Mathematical Theorems/Proofs and Logic are properly abstract entities which have their own metaphysical existence different from the physical or material world.

Huxley, I understand that this bot filter of a thing is annoying. It is the reason why I once decided to move a discussion away from the board. I have a reply to the last comment of yours that was directed at me. But I just don't want to waste the time to type it if it will be excised anyway. So, my good friend, I am once again, extending a right hand of fellowship to you so that you can come and post your objection on my blog, if you care to, so as to receive my answer.

Hmmm,

Signing in,

The originator of this thread seems to want to broker a discussion anchored on reason with the hope that such an exercise may convince dyed-in-the-wool atheists about the existence of God. Perhaps, he imagines that many of the atheists he is responding to have not yet contemplated the possibility that a God exists. I want to suggest that he may find this to be not just a thankless endeavor but an unproductive one as well.

There are many reasons why I think this is the case, but let me just briefly state a few observations:

1) Many of the atheists that you run into were once theists. Many of them are classically familiar with the teachings and belief systems of various theistic faiths. Their rejection of the faith and ultimately of God is not occasioned by some unfamiliarity with religious or theistic positions.

2) Everyone has something that I would call a skeptical dial inbuilt in us. It is often the case that when we hear certain arguments or statements that we do not personally believe in, we subconciously turn that dial way up. If on the other hand, we start listening to arguments or statements that affirm what we believe, we tend to turn our skeptical dial way down. An Atheist's rejection of God is something done voluntarily--so that in the presence of obvious, commonsensical, intuitive and clearly rational argument for a God hypothesis, you will often find that an atheist has to willfully refuse to accept  such arguments. Indeed he may even be willing to pay a high intellectual cost in any such intellectual encounters by positing the implausible, the non-obvious, the fallacious and even the deeply illogical if by so doing, he will avoid any looming inference to theism.

3) Most atheists that I have discussed with do not have any positive case to make for atheism. It seems to me that if a person cannot conclusively prove God's non-existence, or even intelligently refute sound arguments for a God, such a person should better reclassify him/herself as an agnostics since he/she is taking the position that God's existence is not readily evident or apparent to him/her. But it does look as if atheism has been redefined by these present day 'New Atheists" to be some convenient lack of belief in a God. But this definition is self-serving. If someone wants to call him/herself an atheist, and deigns to engage in any reasonable discussion or debate on the existence or non-existence of a God, he/she has to provide good and convincing argument why we should think that a God does not exist. After all, that is the same burden that a theist in any such discussions is faced with : namely to provide good and convincing evidence why anyone should think that a God does exist.

4) For many theists, their belief in God is not anchored on just reasoning and argumentation alone. There is sometimes a deep and inward personal experience that affirms their implicit belief in God. It is very much like the inward and personal conviction and experience of the external world which cannot be scientifically or empirically proven. So while argumentation based on sound and logical inferences is good, for a theist that is not the entire gamut of inferences available. One has to presuppose atheism for example, to deny the veridical nature of certain judgments and presuppositions which human beings accept and uphold rationally but which are not amenable to the scientific process.


Having said the foregoing, one hopes the calibre of participants invited to this discussion are informed enough as to discuss or debate these all-important issues. For example, it is strange to find that in 2009, some people who would call themselves atheists, and who undoubtedly would want to claim some affinity for science are still positing that the Universe is eternal. Hello? Are these people familiar with the philosophical as well as scientific position on these matters?

The Universe is not eternal--by which we mean that it began to exist a finite time in the past. For a long time, the view in academia was that the universe is eternal, but that view is no longer currently held by any serious person who has bothered to investigate or read up on the issue. There are sound philosophical as well as scientific reasons to believe that the universe was not infinitely pre-existent, but that it came into being a finite time in the past. The Standard Model of the Big Bang - whose predictions have been confirmed over and over has put a nail in the coffin of speculations to the contrary.

Unfortunately, the history of Cosmology or Astrophysics in the 20th century is a history of hopelessly failed attempts to build or advance a model for this universe that is eternal in the past--in other words, a model that avoids the beginning of the universe. That is, some atheists may reject the traditional and widely received Big Bang standard Model (despite its scientific confirmations) because of the fact that the universe by that model began to exist.  The reason is obvious: If this model is not eternal in the past, there is that uncomfortable and looming inference to Theism.  Unfortunately these alternative models fail at establishing a universe  that is eternal in the past or one that avoids a beginning. Besides they have very little actual scientific evidence or support: in other words, these theories are for want of better words, a curious dabbling into some form of metaphysics since they are not based on any actual currently known physics (testable experimental verification). They have had to be discarded or at best ignored at least, until the physicists proposing them furnish us evidence that corroborates some of these fantastic claims.

So what have we seen in 20th century cosmology? No other theory of the Origin of the Universe has been as mathematically consistent and been confirmed by the evidence as the Big Bang Model. We have seen the steady-state model, the oscillating model, the vacuum fluctuation model, the chaotic inflationary model,  the  much speculative Hartle-Hawking model,  and the cyclic/ekpyrotic model - some of them cannot be scientifically verified or proven; some collapse under the weight of their own scientific inconsistencies; they may propose an eternal future, but altogether they fail hopelessly at establishing a model that is eternal in the past.

Signing in,

The originator of this thread seems to want to broker a discussion anchored on reason with the hope that such an exercise may convince dyed-in-the-wool atheists about the existence of God. Perhaps, he imagines that many of the atheists he is responding to have not yet contemplated the possibility that a God exists. I want to suggest that he may find this to be not just a thankless endeavor but an unproductive one as well.

There are many reasons why I think this is the case, but let me just briefly state a few observations:

1) Many of the atheists that you run into were once theists. Many of them are classically familiar with the teachings and belief systems of various theistic faiths. Their rejection of the faith and ultimately of God is not occasioned by some unfamiliarity with religious or theistic positions.

2) Everyone has something that I would call a skeptical dial inbuilt in us. It is often the case that when we hear certain arguments or statements that we do not personally believe in, we subconciously turn that dial way up. If on the other hand, we start listening to arguments or statements that affirm what we believe, we tend to turn our skeptical dial way down. An Atheist's rejection of God is something done voluntarily--so that in the presence of obvious, commonsensical, intuitive and clearly rational argument for a God hypothesis, you will often find that an atheist has to willfully refuse to accept  such arguments. Indeed he may even be willing to pay a high intellectual cost in any such intellectual encounters by positing the implausible, the non-obvious, the fallacious and even the deeply illogical if by so doing, he will avoid any looming inference to theism.

3) Most atheists that I have discussed with do not have any positive case to make for atheism. It seems to me that if a person cannot conclusively prove God's non-existence, or even intelligently refute sound arguments for a God, such a person should better reclassify him/herself as an agnostics since he/she is taking the position that God's existence is not readily evident or apparent to them. But it does look as if atheism has been redefined by these present day 'New Atheists" to be some convenient lack of belief in a God. But this definition is self-serving. If someone wants to call him/herself an atheist, and deigns to engage in any reasonable discussion or debate on the existence or non-existence of a God, he/she has to provide good and convincing argument why we should think that a God does not exist. After all, that is the same burden that a theist in any such discussions is faced with : namely to provide good and convincing evidence why anyone should think that a God does exist.

4) For many theists, their belief in God is not anchored on just reasoning and argumentation alone. There is sometimes a deep and inward personal experience that affirms their implicit belief in God. It is very much like the inward and personal conviction and experience of the external world which cannot be scientifically or empirically proven. So while argumentation based on sound and logical inferences is good, for a theist that is not the entire gamut of inferences available. One has to presuppose atheism for example, to deny the veridical nature of certain judgments and presuppositions which human beings accept and uphold rationally but which are not amenable to the scientific process.


Having said the foregoing, one hopes the calibre of participants invited to this discussion are informed enough as to discuss or debate these all-important issues. For example, it is strange to find that in 2009, some people who would call themselves atheists, and who undoubtedly would want to claim some affinity for science are still positing that the Universe is eternal. Hello? Are these people familiar with the philosophical as well as scientific position on these matters?

The Universe is not eternal--by which we mean that it began to exist a finite time in the past. For a long time, the view in academia was that the universe is eternal, but that view is no longer currently held by any serious person who has bothered to investigate or read up on the issue. There are sound philosophical as well as scientific reasons to believe that the universe was not infinitely pre-existent, but that it came into being a finite time in the past. The Standard Model of the Big Bang - whose predictions have been confirmed over and over has put a nail in the coffin of speculations to the contrary.

Unfortunately, the history of Cosmology or Astrophysics in the 20th century is a history of hopelessly failed attempts to build or advance a model for this universe that is eternal in the past--in other words, a model that avoids the beginning of the universe. That is, some atheists may reject the traditional and widely received Big Bang standard Model (despite its scientific confirmations) because of the fact that the universe by that model began to exist.  The reason is obvious: If this model is not eternal in the past, there is that uncomfortable and looming inference to Theism.  Unfortunately these alternative models fail at establishing a universe  that is eternal in the past or one that avoids a beginning. Besides they have very little actual scientific evidence or support: in other words, these theories are for want of better words, a curious dabbling into some form of metaphysics since they are not based on any actual currently known physics (testable experimental verification). They have had to be discarded or at best ignored at least, until the physicists proposing them furnish us evidence that corroborates some of these fantastic claims.

So what have we seen in 20th century cosmology? No other theory of the Origin of the Universe has been as mathematically consistent and been confirmed by the evidence as the Big Bang Model. We have seen the steady-state model, the oscillating model, the vacuum fluctuation model, the chaotic inflationary model,  the  much speculative Hartle-Hawking model,  and the cyclic/ekpyrotic model - some of them cannot be scientifically verified or proven; some collapse under the weight of their own scientific inconsistencies; they may propose an eternal future, but altogether they fail hopelessly at establishing a model that is eternal in the past.

Signing in,

The originator of this thread seems to want to broker a discussion anchored on reason with the hope that such an exercise may convince dyed-in-the-wool atheists about the existence of God. Perhaps, he imagines that many of the atheists he is responding to have not yet contemplated the possibility that a God exists. I want to suggest that he may find this to be not just a thankless endeavor but an unproductive one as well.

There are many reasons why I think this is the case, but let me just briefly state a few observations:

1) Many of the atheists that you run into were once theists. Many of them are classically familiar with the teachings and belief systems of various theistic faiths. Their rejection of the faith and ultimately of God is not occasioned by some unfamiliarity with religious or theistic positions.

2) Everyone has something that I would call a skeptical dial inbuilt in us. It is often the case that when we hear certain arguments or statements that we do not personally believe in, we subconciously turn that dial way up. If on the other hand, we start listening to arguments or statements that affirm what we believe, we tend to turn our skeptical dial way down. An Atheist's rejection of God is something done voluntarily--so that in the presence of obvious, commonsensical, intuitive and clearly rational argument for a God hypothesis, you will often find that an atheist has to willfully refuse to accept  such arguments. Indeed he may even be willing to pay a high intellectual cost in any such intellectual encounters by positing the implausible, the non-obvious, the fallacious and even the deeply illogical if by so doing, he will avoid any looming inference to theism.

3) Most atheists that I have discussed with do not have any positive case to make for atheism. It seems to me that if a person cannot conclusively prove God's non-existence, or even intelligently refute sound arguments for a God, such a person should better reclassify him/herself as an agnostics since he/she is taking the position that God's existence is not readily evident or apparent to them. But it does look as if atheism has been redefined by these present day 'New Atheists" to be some convenient lack of belief in a God. But this definition is self-serving. If someone wants to call him/herself an atheist, and deigns to engage in any reasonable discussion or debate on the existence or non-existence of a God, he/she has to provide good and convincing argument why we should think that a God does not exist. After all, that is the same burden that a theist in any such discussions is faced with : namely to provide good and convincing evidence why anyone should think that a God does exist.

4) For many theists, their belief in God is not anchored on just reasoning and argumentation alone. There is sometimes a deep and inward personal experience that affirms their implicit belief in God. It is very much like the inward and personal conviction and experience of the external world which cannot be scientifically or empirically proven. So while argumentation based on sound and logical inferences is good, for a theist that is not the entire gamut of inferences available. One has to presuppose atheism for example, to deny the veridical nature of certain judgments and presuppositions which human beings accept and uphold rationally but which are not amenable to the scientific process.


Having said the foregoing, one hopes that participants in this discussion are informed enough as to discuss or debate these all-important issues. For example, it is strange to find that in 2009, some people who would call themselves atheists, and who undoubtedly would want to claim some affinity for science are still positing that the Universe is eternal. Hello? Are these people familiar with the philosophical as well as scientific position on these matters?

The Universe is not eternal--by which we mean that it began to exist a finite time in the past. For a long time, the view in academia was that the universe is eternal, but that view is no longer currently held by any serious person who has bothered to investigate or read up on the issue. There are sound philosophical as well as scientific reasons to believe that the universe was not infinitely pre-existent, but that it came into being a finite time in the past. The Standard Model of the Big Bang - whose predictions have been confirmed over and over has put a nail in the coffin of speculations to the contrary.

Unfortunately, the history of Cosmology or Astrophysics in the 20th century is a history of hopelessly failed attempts to build or advance a model for this universe that is eternal in the past--in other words, a model that avoids the beginning of the universe. That is, some atheists may reject the traditional and widely received Big Bang standard Model (despite its scientific confirmations) because of the fact that the universe by that model began to exist.  The reason is obvious: If this model is not eternal in the past, there is that uncomfortable and looming inference to Theism.  Unfortunately these alternative models fail at establishing a universe  that is eternal in the past or one that avoids a beginning. Besides they have very little actual scientific evidence or support: in other words, these theories are for want of better words, a curious dabbling into some form of metaphysics since they are not based on any actual currently known physics (testable experimental verification). They have had to be discarded or at best ignored at least, until the physicists proposing them furnish us evidence that corroborates some of these fantastic claims.

So what have we seen in 20th century cosmology? No other theory of the Origin of the Universe has been as mathematically consistent and been confirmed by the evidence as the Big Bang Model. We have seen the steady-state model, the oscillating model, the vacuum fluctuation model, the chaotic inflationary model,  the  much speculative Hartle-Hawking model,  and the cyclic/ekpyrotic model - some of them cannot be scientifically verified or proven; some collapse under the weight of their own scientific inconsistencies; they may propose an eternal future, but altogether they fail hopelessly at establishing a model that is eternal in the past.

KAG:

Oh, it's a fair point that sometimes people cling dogmatically to their preset definitions of terms, but I suspect that even in spite of that, with definitions already given, by both parties, for thorny words, those in the discussion would, at the very least, know what the other means to say when a vagueish term is used.

Also, you'll note that it is now, with this post that you have defined a triangle in such strict way as to avoid any misconception of what you mean. With your previous definition - "[anything that has] three sides with angles that add up to 180 degrees" - a square could have been mistaken for a triangle (after all, three of its sides do add up to 180), thereby ensuring that you and another talk past each other. That happens quite a bit.

The original definition I gave was as clear as it can possibly be. By that definition, it was clear that the shape under consideration has only 3 sides and that the angles in this three sided figure or shape add up to 180 degrees. No one said anything about a triangle being defined as “something which only three of its four (or more than three) sides could add up to 180 degrees”. That is simply reading into the definition something clearly not there. No sensible person is going to read into that definition a claim that a square could be mistaken for a triangle, I suspect, because a square has [b]FOUR [/b]sides not three. Besides, the internal angles of a square add up to more than 180 degrees.

KAG:
I know what the first premise states: "Anything with a beginning has cause." It's wrong. By the way, you're operating on a false premise. That is, that some things, given a quantum fluctuation, etc. may pop into existence spontaneously is not an indication that everything and anything will or should. No, that's a nonsense argument. That particles can be in a state of indeterminacy doesn't mean the moon disappears when I turn my back on it.

You have not shown me how the first premiss is wrong. So far, you are ignoring the full explication of the first premiss. First of all, if you understood the first premiss, it is not just saying that there is a cause or explanation for whatever begins to exist: such causes are not necessarily material causes—they can be efficient causes as well. Like I explained further, “Nothing indeed comes out of nothing, from nothing by nothing”.

You are yet to demonstrate that this is the case with virtual particles.

Virtual particles do not come out of NOTHING neither indeed are they brought about by NOTHING.  The statement “that some things, given a quantum fluctuation, etc may pop into existence spontaneously, ” (emphasis mine) betrays the hollowness of this objection. Why should anyone grant you this ‘quantum fluctuation’ if you are making the argument that there is no cause or explanation for virtual particles? I suspect the problem here is the fact that these virtual particles randomly pop in and out of existence. But the indisputable fact is that the cause of virtual particles is indeed this quantum or vacuum fluctuation which is highly indeterministic—only that it isn’t a material cause but an efficient one. Furthermore, it is very clear that this quantum fluctuation is not operating on NOTHING, but rather on the quantum vacuum—which as I have explained earlier is not NOTHING. It is a roiling sea of energy. Given all these realities, it is very absurd to pretend that virtual particles violate the first premiss.

The comment about the moon is just an unfortunate strawman—it has no relevance here. We cannot be mixing up classical physics with quantum physics. At any rate, if one were to seriously focus on the objection, the moon is not posited to have sprang out uncaused out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing. That is a position that no serious physicist would take.  If anything can arise out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing, (which means we can’t grant you fluctuations in the already existing quantum vacuum) then the earlier observation still stands—and by that deduction, anything and everything ought to be popping into existence all the time.

KAG:
Also, the "law" "energy can neither be created nor destroyed" was "empirically confirmed by science" until it wasn't. The arguments for virtual particles and radioactive decay are actually scientific findings.

No one is denying the scientific veridicality of virtual particles or the radioactive decay process/event. What you seem to be suggesting here is that science is not rigid but dynamic-so that what was once thought to be the best explanation of physical reality can eventually be revised in the light of new knowledge. I happen to agree with this. In this case however, there is no hope that there’d ever be a time when physically instantiated entities in this universe will be shown to have no physical cause or explanation. To put it simply again, there is no chance that whatever that begins to exist in this universe can be shown to have arisen out of nothing, from nothing, and by nothing. "Being" simply just does not come from "non-being".

KAG:
Um, not quite. They are perfect counter-examples because they show that the first premise of your argument - the cosmological argument, and other subsets and antecedents - has been falsified. Yes, quantum fluctuations precede virtual particles, but there is no apparent cause for them. And once again, that space isn't a vacuum doesn't impact on the case of virtual particles. It isn't cause by anything in the vacuum of space.

Once again, without a quantum vacuum (a roiling sea of energy at the quantum level) there cannot be any quantum fluctuations (temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in the quantum vacuum). Furthermore, without a quantum fluctuation, there cannot be the random and spontaneous creation of virtual particles. Quantum fluctuations not only have to precede virtual particle creation, for any virtual particles to begin to exist, or to be detected in experiments, there has to be some quantum fluctuation or excitation in a quantum field. That is why quantum fluctuations are considered the efficient causes of virtual particles.

No one is suggesting that virtual particles are caused by some other thing in space but that the very thing you call "vacuum" at the quantum level is pervaded by rich energy and that an excitation or a fluctuation in this roiling sea of energy can generate virtual particles which disappear almost immediately rejoining the quantum vacuum itself. It can be likened to how the turbulent and erratic churning of the sea can sometimes cause waves to shoot water molecules up into the air and shortly afterwards the specific water molecules disappear or rejoin the sea. Like I said once more, these virtual particles, do not arise out of nothing, from nothing or by nothing.

Hence, I do not think this is a valid defeater for the first premiss.

Too bad Buda,

And I really had answers to your last objections. Anyway, it has been nice exchanging ideas briefly with everyone and I am officially out of this thread. Anyone interested in exploring this discussion further can meet me here:

http://anaedo.blog-city.com/the_cosmological_argument.htm

Cheers!

buda atum:

Thanks for this, Prizm, I am one of the lazy ones. Just a question, its that "begins". I am certain this type of logic has a basis, but does it quite work here?

There is no evidence for the Universe beginning I would have you consider. Are you asking that one believe it did? Could space, time, matter and energy not have existed incontingently, with an infinite past?

Sir, for a long time, the popular idea amongst atheists was that the universe was infinite and eternal. Such a view is no longer being seriously held by atheists and theists alike. There is powerful scientific evidence and confirmation that the Universe started to exist/began to exist/commenced to be a finite time in the past (about 13.7 billion years ago). At the creation of the universe, space, time, matter, energy, dark matter, dark energy, gravitation, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force etc came into being. So to answer your question, space, time, matter and energy are contingent entities (they do not exist "incontingently" or by "necessity" and as such do not have an infinite past.

KAG:


Well, first, while you may not like the idea of first settling on definitions; in philosophical discussions defining the terms one is using and why it should be accepted is probably one of the most important aspects of said discussion. For instance, to bend your example a little to fit the scheme of the general discussion of the thread, if a triangle is defined as anything that has "three sides with angles that add up to 180 degrees", should anything that has "three sides with angles that add up to 180 degrees" be automatically called or accepted as a triangle? Thus settling on all of the parameters removes confusion and ensures we all work using the same signifiers for the same signified.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, the first postulate of the cosmological argument is wrong. Not everything that begins to exist has a cause, nor does every occurrence necessarily need a tangible precedent. Sure in Aristotle's via Aquinas' via the "times" of many modern theistic apologists all that had been observed indicated that the first premise must be an axiom; however, with the onset of the likes of quantum physics and even studies of radioactivity it's known that things are different from human intuited arguments.

Finally, yes even virtual particles and radioactive decay. The argument is that everything has to be caused. They contravene the causality premise because, particularly in the case of virtual particles, the fluctuation isn't caused by the "veritable ‘sea’ of energy".

Indeed definitions are useful but as is the nature of these sorts of discussions, sometimes there is a disagreement on precise definitions with each side dogmatically clinging to whatever definition best suits them. If I present an argument with a certain set of definitions, I expect any interlocutor to approach the issue on the basis of my carefully delineated definitions. Otherwise, there is no sense in having a discussion and one would effectively be arguing past the other.

To address your query, any shape that has three sides and angles that add up to 180 degrees is by definition a triangle. I suppose in a discussion, someone might ask why a triangle has to be defined that way. Unless you can come up with a better answer than that is the definition of what a triangle really is, I don’t see how far you can get in that discussion. So, anyone who wants to argue that triangles could have 4 or more sides, or that the angles in a triangle could add up to anything other than 180 degrees is begging to have a discussion with himself.

The first premiss is not to be understood as saying “everything has to be caused” instead it is saying that an entity needs a cause or explanation if and only if it has a beginning. To further expatiate on the first premiss, nothing comes out of nothing, from nothing, by nothing; or to simply state it “Being does not come from non-being.” So we are not talking of material causes here only but efficient causes as well. If things could really spontaneously pop into existence from nothing by nothing then there is no reason why any and everything doesn’t spontaneously pop into existence all the time. So, there is no fear that while you are busy typing away at your pc, jackals could be popping into existence in the room next door and defiling the carpet or furniture. Indeed, there is no reason to believe that horses, watches, Darwin, erasers could pop into existence anywhere, anytime out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing. To argue against this will be to strain credulity. The first premise is more plausible than its negation. This is empirically confirmed constantly in science.

Now, all too often atheists who realize that they cannot argue with the second premise find that they have to cling dogmatically to the first premise hoping that it could be subverted. They cite recent work in modern quantum physics. According to some interpretations of quantum physics, there are events that are spontaneous events and do not have deterministic causes.  This is not an authentic counterexample because this applies to just some interpretations; in some interpretations some subatomic realities are fully deterministic. You will be assuming without justification the truth of an indeterministic premiss.  At any rate, virtual particles do not come into being from nothing by nothing uncaused—rather they are fluctuations of the vacuum energy at that quantum level. Indeed as this fluctuation creates these virtual particles, we find that they appear and quickly disappear into the quantum vacuum (this quantum vacuum is NOT nothing rather a turbulent ‘sea’ of energy).

So the first premiss is intact.

Hey Huxley and co, you may check the URL again. Thanks.

After reading through the number of posts that have appeared mysteriously back on to this closed thread since I last posted a reply, I have to say that I am not so comfortable with the idea that the thread can be closed arbitrarily or that a single post for example has character limits. Many times, discussions on this issue require a lot more than a few simple sentences to develop an argument and effectively communicate. Besides, I am not a regular participant on these boards. For these reasons, I am tempted to carry my portion of the discussion from this forum away to a blog for those atheists who really want to pursue a line of discussion with me in particular.

The sense in doing this is because it enables me to isolate those sort of arguments coming from the theist or agnostic side of the fence that are really not germane to the discourse or that  I actually do not endorse; or which I feel are not communicating effectively. I assure any atheist or agnostic that is interested in really discussing these issues in an atmosphere devoid of ad-hominem attacks that it will be a really fun and enriching exercise.

To proceed, I’ll post my reply to Wirinet’s question in this personal blog below. If Wirinet feels like continuing the discussion with me over at that blog, he/she will be deeply appreciated. I will also repost the Cosmological Argument as a way of re-introducing the discussion for people like Chris, Huxley and Tudor if they are interested. These gentlemen strike me as reasonably possessed by the topic, so it will be great if we can discuss these issues in an environment devoid of the occasional and unintended ambient chatter or noise. My guarantee to these people is that their objections or skepticism will be graciously received and honestly answered (to the best of my ability); also their opposing but positive cases (arguments) will be diligently considered; and in doing so, we would learn a few things ourselves. This is what intelligent discussions are after all. See you all sometime.

Cheers.

http://anaedo.blog-city.com/on_numbers_a_reply_to_wirinet.htm

http://anaedo.blog-city.com/the_cosmological_argument.htm

Tudór:

O.KOh i see, you're one of the arrogant types who feels is your perogative to define terms as you see fit.
Who gave you the impression the aliens are physical?
They could perhaps be on another frequency or plane ivisible to our eyes, can't they?
Again you conviniently make this flawed and narrow minded assertion because it suits your position.
The term "supercomputer" here is used as a concept and does not necessarily mean the physical, materialistic, spatialy defined,temporal computation device like we have here on earth.
Its just the same way you use the term God to describe the concept of a starting force.

Surely you don't expect me to invent an out of this world lingo to pass across this conceptGod appearing physically like he did to the isrealites would be empirical enough won't it?
Just as chris said, That this entity might exist

doesn't mean you ascribe to it attributes of forgiving sins, answering prayers, jealous etc- That is the concept of god as potrayed by religion and that is what i disbelieve.I come to wonder how the christian god concept came into existence if not by arbitrary decree of deluded men.

There is really no reason to duplicate your posts.

My position is that your proposition that the God concept can be likened to a "alien supercomputer" is FACILE. It seems to me that you do not exactly know what it means for something to be considered "physical" in the case of your rejoinder about the alien comparison. Also, it just seems to me that you want to define a supercomputer away from its finite spatiality, finite materiality or even its transitory attribute.  If you want to imbue an "alien supercomputer" with extra-cosmological attributes so as to call it God, that's perfectly fine by me. Have it your way!

Chrisbenogor:

Hello Prizm,
It would do a lot of good if you were a bit more open and gave us the definition of what God is just like huxley asked you so we know what we are talking about.
Thomas aquinas arguments rely on the idea of a regress and the invoking of God to terminate it. Your premises make the entirely fallacious assumption that God himself is immune to this regress just like tudor pointed out. Your first argument says whatever begins to exist must have a cause, ironically your entire argument is about the EXISTence of God, so simply tell us why God is immune from being caused? Even if I allow you the very dubious luxury of just conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name because we need one there is no reason whatsoever to endow that terminator with human attributes such as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and even reading innermost thoughts.
Next time before you go copying your proofs do well to read through them and filter the things you do not understand, your analogy about triangles is very laughable and for someone who does "research" you should go look up simple geometry online, things are not just defined out of hunches, mathematics does not work like religion.  
I mean what happened to the plain ole I do not know?

It is hard to make out what you are exactly arguing for here. The only thing I can simply say in reply is this:

"God does not BEGIN to exist" Take some time and digest this. Numbers for example do not BEGIN to exist. They exist whether or not there is a universe or not; they exist whether there are life-permitting universes elsewhere or a gallery of hypothetical or life-prohibiting universes; they exist whether there are human beings to conceptualize them or not.

What this clearly means is that to think that the Cosmological Argument invites an "infinite regress" is to have misunderstood the argument. Sure a regress is possible, but that regress cannot be infinite or there cannot be anything currently existing.