6/5/09

On the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorns, et al., part 4 of 4

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Posted by Ken
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22 comments:

  1. Masked MarauderJune 5, 2009 at 8:35 AM

    1) Timeless: since God preexisted time.
     
    Nothing can preexist time. There is no 'pre' anything without time.

    4) Uncaused: since God existed before time which is a requirement for cause and effect relationships.
     
    In the absence of time the word "before" is undefined which makes the statement absurd on its face.

    If time is necessary for cause and effect then by your own definition your hypothetical god can not cause anything, at least not until after it starts somehow else.

    And you're still ignoring physics and begging the question that everything must be caused.

    So, four lengthy posts down the road and a lot of hand-waving and special pleading later your proof is as rootless and feckless as it ever was.

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  2. RhologyJune 5, 2009 at 9:42 AM

    He LOGICALLY pre-exists time.
    We can either go with that or with an uncaused universe kablooie.
    Or we can go with infinite regress.
    Or you can just accept that speaking of logical precedence is perfectly reasonable.

    So not all things must be caused? What must not be caused?

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  3. Masked MarauderJune 5, 2009 at 11:29 AM

    He LOGICALLY pre-exists time.
     
    No, he can't LOGICALLY pre-exist time. The possibility is excluded by the definitions of the prefix 'pre-' and the word 'time'. Its an absurd assertion. It is not logically possible.

    We can either go with that or with an uncaused universe kablooie.
     
    Bingo! An uncaused universe makes more sense than a "logical" proof that only works if you ignore the meanings of the words in it.

    Or we can go with infinite regress.
     
    Why not? Your dicta ex cathedra-style exclusion of the possibility is just another ad hoc assumption added for no apparent reason other than to force the conclusion you want to arrive at.

    This entire so-called proof is just a sort of stealth tautology where you pick and choose your a priori assumptions to force the conclusion you wanted in the first place.

    So not all things must be caused? What must not be caused?
     
    You're missing the point. Again. Its not whether everything is caused, its whether everything must be caused. Its the necessity of it that your argument rests on, not the banality of it.

    Try to remember that it is you who are claiming that causation is necessary for everything everywhere and everywhen. And it is also your pet argument that depends on the presupposed necessity of causation. So it is your responsibility to make the case.

    Considering that you guys routinely attack naturalism on the grounds that induction is a malign, treacherous and unreliable method, I can hardly wait to hear a defence of your key premise without it.

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  4. RhologyJune 5, 2009 at 1:29 PM

    It's not logically impossible to logically precede, in the sense of being the causal agent, time.
    Logical does not equal CHRONOlogical. You need to make an argument for your assertion.

    An uncaused universe doesn't make any sense. Zero is not more than anything. What is your argument for the possibility of an uncaused universe?
    And remember, it's not I who thought of this. 'Twas Hume - "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause." So why was Hume wrong here?

    Induction isn't a particularly unreliable method on Christianity. On naturalism it is. That distinction is important.

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  5. AnonymousJune 5, 2009 at 7:57 PM

    Human logic is fallible and is simply the best we can do in our current state. what is is and we can merely assume what is with a watered down version of it given our brain capacity.

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  6. KenJune 5, 2009 at 8:57 PM

    MaskedMarauder,
    As you saw in the first part no one argued that, as you now state it, “everything must be caused.” Rather, that “Anything that begins to exist has a cause.”

    God’s causing creation was when time began; when the cause was initially followed by the effect.

    But I know that some prefer to believe that nothing caused nothing to explode for not reason and made everything.

    aDios,
    Mariano

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  7. Masked MarauderJune 6, 2009 at 10:04 AM

    Mariano: As you saw in the first part no one argued that, as you now state it, “everything must be caused.” Rather, that “Anything that begins to exist has a cause.”
     
    That's just a product of typing responses quickly. I respond to this here.

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  8. Masked MarauderJune 6, 2009 at 10:14 AM

    Rhology: An uncaused universe doesn't make any sense. Zero is not more than anything.
     
    Zero is greater than all negative numbers. Are you saying that there was negative time, some different kind of time before regular time began? Now, that makes no sense.

    I don't have a problem with an uncaused universe. Perhaps you're confounding the limits of your imagination with the limits of existence. As the late, great, and unquestionable authority David Hume once wrote: "Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation they occasion."

    What is your argument for the possibility of an uncaused universe?
     
    There is no reason to exclude it from consideration. Especially when 'cause' is so poorly defined.

    And remember, it's not I who thought of this. 'Twas Hume - "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause." So why was Hume wrong here?
     
    First, you beg the question that Hume was right in the first place.

    Second, the majority of what we know of the universe was discovered long after Hume died, so his opinion, however enlightened it was in the 18th century,is no longer a well informed opinion. Do you really think that everything that has been discovered since then is irrelevant to this discussion?

    But, if Hume said that it must be true, is that your argument? Thank the FSM that Hume knew absolutely everything! Or did he? What did David Hume actually mean by 'cause'?

    My recollection is that he argued that causation is a habit of thought born of experience. Which sort of makes the work product of the intervening two centuries more relevant.

    But then Immanual Kant said the laws of nature are really laws of understanding.

    And then again Judea Pearl, in a discussion of Adam & Eve's colloquy with God in the Garden of Eden, strangely enough, concludes that "causal explanation is a man-made concept."

    Oh dear! Who to trust! How to decide! What to believe!

    If you ever want to make a serious effort to bind your favored imaginary universe to this physical universe you will sooner or later have to confront raw experience and how physical brains process it. In a word, induction.

    Induction isn't a particularly unreliable method on Christianity. On naturalism it is. That distinction is important.
     
    Well, no special pleading here! LOL!!

    I'm framing this. Its a classic.

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  9. Masked MarauderJune 6, 2009 at 11:05 AM

    Rhology: It's not logically impossible to logically precede, in the sense of being the causal agent, time.
    Logical does not equal CHRONOlogical. You need to make an argument for your assertion.
     
    Nice pun. But this exposes the essence of the problem here. I am talking about this universe and you are talking about an imaginary universe.

    If it makes things easier, I'll gladly concede that there is at least one conceivable imaginary universe in which your imaginary friend is a necessary being, logically speaking.

    But logic compels nothing in this universe. What is logically possible or impossible is no reliable guide to what to expect from the world.

    To quote yet another venerable expert, in his ruminations on Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, Borges said: "We (the undivided divinity that operates within us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time; but we have allowed into its architecture tenuous and eternal interstices of unreason to lest us understand that it is false."

    What's interesting to me about this, besides its content, is that although I read a lot of Borges when I took Spanish in College, I didn't encounter this particular passage until a physical chemistry class in graduate school. It appears in Moore's physical chemistry text book at the top of the first page of the first chapter "Physiochemical Systems."

    Despite the low opinion you have of science and scientists, curiosity about the nature of Nature is never far from our minds, and we take it at least as seriously as you guys do. But we prefer to look at the world around us for answers to our questions rather than dedicating ourselves to defending the opinions of long dead men who couldn't begin to imagine the things we know today, let alone explain them.r

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  10. RhologyJune 8, 2009 at 8:31 AM

    -I don't have a problem with an uncaused universe. -

    So it just poofed into existence, uncaused, for no reason and by no action. Great. That's faith.


    -you beg the question that Hume was right in the first place.-

    That's not the correct usage of "beg the question". I quoted him b/c he made a great point. It's up to you to explain why he's wrong.


    -I'll gladly concede that there is at least one conceivable imaginary universe in which your imaginary friend is a necessary being, logically speaking.-

    Then you're not an atheist...


    -We (the undivided divinity that operates within us) have dreamed the world. -

    And that's what I meant about naturalism and induction.
    There's no evidence anyone could bring fwd to overturn this assertion. But on Christianity, there is - God's promise and God's revelation. You will scoff, but part of the proof is that the alternative you propose leads to absurdity.

    Mi esposa también estudió español. I just almost minored in it.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  11. Masked MarauderJune 8, 2009 at 9:19 AM

    Rhology: So it[the universe] just poofed into existence, uncaused, for no reason and by no action. Great. That's faith.
     
    I never said that it did. I just don't dismiss it out of hand a priori. If the evidence eventually shows that the universe was caused, that's OK with me. If it shows it wasn't caused, that's OK with me too. In my humble opinion our understanding is supposed to fit the facts, not the other way around as you have it.

    That's not the correct usage of "beg the question". I quoted him b/c he made a great point. It's up to you to explain why he's wrong.
     
    Challenging someone to prove the statement is wrong implies that you think Hume was right, which is begging the question. If I misconstrued your cryptic response then I apologize and agree with you that he is not right (or wrong). Since what you quote is Hume's personal opinion it is neither right nor wrong.

    To the extent that the quote asserts any fact at all it refers to his life history or writings and speech. I haven't read most of the former and have no access to any of the latter, so I won't contend that aspect of the claim. Hume may have been lying or telling the truth when he wrote that, I have no way of knowing. But I didn't address that because I don't see how Hume's integrity has anything to do with the origin of the universe.

    Then you're not an atheist...
     
    No, I am. Your favorite imaginary universe has no relation to this one we live in unless you can show that it is a valid model of it. You can't.



    You will scoff, but part of the proof is that the alternative you propose leads to absurdity.
     
    Put Achilles and a tortoise on a race track and see who wins. That would settle that. And it would show the absurdity of trying to solve empirical questions with a priori logical argument.

    As for considering our view of the world as a sort of dream, that's factually accurate, it is all mental, and so a sort of dream. But acknowledging that up front leads to healthy skepticism and an honest uncertainty, not absurdity. What's absurd is confusing your dream with concrete objective reality.

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  12. RhologyJune 8, 2009 at 2:44 PM

    MM,

    OK. I'll just sit here quietly amused that you think it's possible that sthg could arise w/o a cause, and that you think evidence could someday appear to prove that. Very, very interesting. And you have more faith than many Christians I know, so congratulations on being very religious.

    You still don't understand what it means to beg the question. Maybe check the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy or something; quoting someone to support one's position is not begging the question.

    Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm responding here, since you haven't really said anythg of substance. Cheers.

    Peace,
    Rhology

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  13. Masked MarauderJune 8, 2009 at 4:13 PM

    Rhology:

    Begging the question is introducing a proposition requiring proof as an assumption without proof. And that's what you do when you assume Hume's opinion is correct without proof.

    Not to draw this out any longer than it needs to be, but you're the one evading substance. Rather than try to explain how one event can precede another when there is no time, you just try to change subjects with one specious diversion after another. Whether I think this universe may or may not have been caused in some sense is irrelevant to whether a putative cause coming before an effect, as required by this broken proof, is logically possible when 'before' is undefined.

    Its that simple. If you can't address that you might as well bug out.

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  14. GarageDragonJune 9, 2009 at 9:57 PM

    Rhology wrote:

    I'll just sit here quietly amused that you think it's possible that sthg could arise w/o a cause

    Don't you believe God exits without a cause? Are you quietly amused at yourself?

    In addition, did not I give you a lesson about begging the question a few months ago? Yes, I did. I challenged you to justify induction without begging the question.

    You answered:

    induction is sound due to His promise of keeping the processes according to which the world operates



    So how do you know God will keep his promise? You say he always has? So what, that does not mean he always will. It does you no good to just assert that that is "his nature", as I could just assert that it is the "nature" of nature to remain uniform.

    You cannot use induction to justify induction. You are begging the question, as I predicted you would.

    The problem of induction remains.

    Nice try though!

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  15. AnonymousJune 9, 2009 at 10:10 PM

    Unicorns would be pink if they reflected pink electromagnetic radiation (i.e., light). However, in order to be invisible, the unicorns would reflect no electromagnetic radiation. The term "invisible pink unicorn" then is self contradictory. Therefore, we know absolutely that they could not exist.

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  16. Masked MarauderJune 10, 2009 at 8:38 AM

    Unicorns would be pink if they reflected pink electromagnetic radiation ...
    Actually, color is a subjective perception, not a physical property. Wavelength is physical and color is mental. So, somebody envisioning a non-physical thing might well attach the color pink to it. For example, synesthesia is an interesting cognitive condition where someone might attach different colors to numerals and so '3' might be blue, '1' might be green, etc.

    So the color of the invisible unicorn isn't a deal breaker here.

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  17. RhologyJune 11, 2009 at 7:51 AM

    UnBeguiled,

    Remember, God didn't arise. That's a key distinction, and it's pretty elementary.


    -I challenged you to justify induction without begging the question.-

    I appeal to the promise of the God of the Bible, which is not viciously circular, since that presupposition is capable of explaining everything and justifying induction, knowledge, intelligibility, etc. A bare appeal to induction as presupp is not capable of that. Nor is the presupp of naturalism. That's the big difference.
    But most people just assume induction is valid, and I like to point that out to show the paucity of their thinking.


    -So how do you know God will keep his promise?-

    B/c if He doesn't, then the world is absurd and induction is useless; inferring from inductive judgments is no guide to truth (but of course, it's questionable whether we can know that inferring from inductive judgments is no guide to truth). In short, to deny this is to affirm that the universe is absurd and to refute one's own position.


    -It does you no good to just assert that that is "his nature", as I could just assert that it is the "nature" of nature to remain uniform.-

    But I know that b/c He told me. How did nature tell you that it's uniform?
    Here's the rub, and here's where you have either to say you don't know or to beg the question viciously.


    -You cannot use induction to justify induction.-

    Preaching to the choir. I don't do so, but thanks for the warning not to be an atheist.


    Peace,
    Rhology

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  18. GarageDragonJune 11, 2009 at 6:39 PM

    Rhology,

    You know because God told you?

    You should be on a street corner with a cardboard sign selling pencils from a cup.

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  19. RhologyJune 12, 2009 at 10:22 AM

    Gotta love substantive responses like UnBeguiled's!

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  20. GarageDragonJune 12, 2009 at 2:42 PM

    Rhology,

    You have claimed that you "know" things because of the voices in your head. If you wish to be taken seriously, perhaps you should not reveal so openly that you are a babbling moon-bat. But it's too late now. Your comments have disqualified you from reasonable conversation.

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  21. AnonymousOctober 1, 2009 at 12:34 PM

    Way to fail Unbeguiled.

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  22. UnknownOctober 2, 2009 at 2:19 AM

    No God or Gods can make that claim. Yahweh does not lift Himself up above anyone else. He does not need to. As Creator, He is already above all. He is by far Mightier, Wiser, more Loving, Kinder and Merciful than any being.

    ReplyDelete

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