SanDiegoAtheist

Albert:

Your argument seems to be predicated upon our personal experience that every effect has a cause, no?

How then can you claim that God is a cause without a prior cause? You have NO personal experience of a cause without a prior cause, do you? How can you come to the conclusion, since all effects we know have prior causes, and also, that all causes we know ALSO have prior causes, that God is a cause without a prior cause? It seems to me that would be a non-sequitur, since we appear to be talking apples and oranges.

Even discounting quantum effects, which give us SOME reason to believe that there may, in fact, be completely UNCAUSED events in the universe (which would negate your, and Aquinas', original axiomatic assertion), the fact that an uncaused cause has never before been observed gives great reason to doubt this line of reasoning.

Moreover, the conclusion that only a personal God could be the uncaused cause, is very certainly an example of an argument by special pleading - there appears to be no very good reason that an uncaused cause that led to the universe be a personal deity, and you haven't provided a sufficient reason for us to believe that it is so. Incidentally, Aquinas' argument on this fails, as, for example, a 'brane' multiverse, or a quantum foam multiverse, both are hypothesis' that could give birth to universes' without end, and without any volition on their part (Aquinas, I believe, argues that creation is an act of will - but I see little reason that it MUST be so if universes are constantly created by a multiverse of the type described in the above hypothesis. Admittedly there is no evidence for these hypothesis, but that puts them in exactly the same boat as your God).

Indeed, I'm also unconvinced that an infinite regress is an impossible situation - it appears to me that an infinite regress, while certainly appearing to be impossible, appears NO MORE IMPOSSIBLE than an uncaused cause - in neither case do we have any personal or evidentiary experience to draw on - both, to our intellects, which are entirely based on cause/effect, appear impossible. One must certainly be correct, but which? Neither appears to be LESS impossible than the other, so the only thing I must conclude is that OUR intellect is too limited by inborn reliance on cause/effect to be able to accurately reason which would be MORE likely than the other.

Cheers,

The San Diego Atheist

diana

It's good to see you posting again. Call me nostalgic, but I've missed you.

*checks pockets*

I can afford...uh...three. Jobar, fetch the gif. I'm taking up a collection....

d

Alix Nenuphar

Albert Cipriani:

Among other things, you said
But 'eternity' is not a term of philosophy, nor are you using it in a philosophical sense; you are using it in a theological sense, contrary to its general usage.

If you choose to express your arguments using uncommon meanings of common terms - and fail to define them in advance - then any misunderstandings on the part of your readers is entirely your fault.

I suggest that your understanding is based on a misunderstanding. From the Summa: Thus eternity is known from two sources: first, because what is eternal is interminable--that is, has no beginning nor end (that is, no term either way); secondly, because eternity has no succession, being simultaneously whole.

Or even Molina's representation: a simultaneous whole comprising all time that is altogether outside of time does not really match your definition.

Aristotle was not discussing eternity of time, but rather eternity of motion. I suggest you reread the Physics.

I am not equivocating; I am pointing out that you offer the statement that God is indescribable. But that implies that the statement you have just made, and indeed, every sentence which makes a statement about God is false by definition. Your own definition. However, I admit that your misuse of the terms 'describe' and 'define' does represent an equivocation.

See my point above. If God is indescribable, you cannot make any statement concerning God and assign it a truth value. It is equivalent to the following, well-known conundrum:

"Everything I say is a lie."

"I am lying."

You go on to say,
I said nothing about objective standards; I said that your statement that everything having a cause was improbable is your personal opinion until you can back it up with quantifiable and verifiable measurements. You did not offer any when asked.

With regard to the abortion issue, you are essentially saying, "all people who share my view that abortion is objectively immoral share my view."

You have not yet demonstrated the existence of objective morality; you have assumed it as part of your religious beliefs.

Please do not misunderstand: I may agree with you.

But the form in which your arguments are presented is what I am discussing - not their content.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, not every effect we have investigated has a cause, so your argument is irrelevant. Besides, you stated that the cause-effect relationship we perceive is improbable, now you are arguing that it is an objective standard.

May I gently suggest that contradicting yourself in your own quotes does not leave your readers with a very firm conviction of your ability to reason?

Again, I suggest you reread your own posts. If we know all that there is to know, then we know all that we can know... we cannot know any more, since no more exists to be known.

Your contention appears to be, if we know all that there is to be known, then there is more that we do not know.

I am not making a theological point about knowledge, I am making a logic point about your statement.

Let's try this in symbolic logic form:

P1: We know all there is to know (your statement)
P2: We have more to learn (your statement)

But P2 implies ~P1, so you cannot state that both P1 and P2 are true.

It is clear that you know nothing about quantum physics; I said nothing about Heisenberg (please, check your spelling before posting names). I am referring to vacuum fluctuations (sometimes called quantum fluctuations). Check any good reference work on quantum cosmology, for example.

Precisely how does a non-mechanistic universe imply lack of free will or lack of need for a Creator God? I find this statement almost completely incomprehensible. Why do you praise Heisenberg? Why is he even involved in this discussion?

Aside from theology, there is no discipline to which mathematics does not apply, and I am not, in fact, a mathematician. Not right now, anyway.

And yet you just applied mathematics to this example. Also, note that once again, you failed to read what was posted. I stated that the fact that every member of set S has property P in no way implies that S has P. Read that again, please. Of course it is possible that set S has P; but set S may not have P, and requires separate examination to determine P for S.

I apologize if you cannot follow all my points. But I note the following problems with your posts:

1) You use terminology in non-standard ways without explanation. This leads to confusion on the part of your readers, and an inability to make your point successfully, as you spend a great deal of time in recriminatory posts regarding that same use of terms.

2) You use internally inconsistent arguments.

3) You fail to carefully read both your own posts and your opponents posts.

4) You make statements concerning fields in which you clearly have little or no knowledge.

5) You use non-sequiturs to establish your points emotionally, rather than logically.

If I may be so bold, were you to clear up some of these points, you might find yourself accorded more respect and consideration on these boards.

As a newcomer, I apologise if these statements appear harsh, but the topic is fascinating (good Catholic girl that I am), and I would prefer to engage in serious and challenging discussions of theology, rather than sterile exercises in semantics.

Koyaanisqatsi

Excellent post Alix and welcome!

Though I fear your carefully thought out analysis will fall on deliberately closed eyes. Albert, as I'm sure you can discern, is under the misguided notion that his poetry (read: rhetoric) has probative value.

Albert Cipriani

Hey Koy,
I haven’t locked horns with you in well over a year. I always admired your passion and found you, Koy, to be the least coy person on this board.

But since D has welcomed me back in these parts (I’ve been slugging it out on the evolution vs. creation forum), and since Jobar is apologizing to our new comers for my curmudgeon existence, and while Almond Joy bars are being scraped up in anticipation of my de-conversion, it’s only appropriate that we all give ourselves a big group hug.

For the moment, let’s revel in the truth that we are not enemies. Tho that, too, has no “probative value” and Almond Joys have no nutritional value, there’s no reason not to imbibe. Then as you guys reach for the Almond Joys I’ll reach for my buried hatchet.

OK, group hug time is over. Back into your corners and excuse me while I fuel up my flame thrower. -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Almond Joy Deprived Traditional Catholic

Godot

I hate to nitpick here Albert, but if it is impossible to describe a transcendental being, how in the bloody hell can you define it? By any stretch of the imagination, this cannot be. Any terminology applied with respect to a transcendental being pales in comparison to what they truly ARE. A description is telling me what something IS LIKE, a definition tells me what something IS. As inaccurate as it may be, I am far closer to the reality of things if I try to describe god than if I define him.


Also, it's Heisenburg, not Hinesburg. Finally, despite enjoying the way you craft together your arguments, couldn't you come up with something better than the Cosmological argument. That one's getting a bit old.

sandlewood

A problem is that when Albert says an Almond Joy is indescribable, he’s talking about the taste of it, not the thing itself.

Anyway, I think the introduction of the word “describe” has cluttered up the issue. We should forget about it.

Albert defines God as the absence of all things. Perhaps this sounds nice and tidy (and poetic), but it means nothing. You have not defined it at all. You’ve just escaped defining it.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Alix,
Koy is right; your post is excellent. Ergo, my delay in responding to it, which is the highest compliment I can make to it. Conversely, I ask your indulgence in my relatively quick response to Sandlewood's far less worthy post.

Sandlewood says: Likedumb, I would not be defining anything at all were I to define dryness as the absence of wetness or darkness as the absence of light, or cold as the absence of heat? Come clean Sandlewood. Tell me truly. Think about it: things CAN be defined in terms of what they are not.

But I know, it's more fun to simply dismiss my working definition of God as a poetic smokescreen. Truth is, like the song says, "I can see for miles and miles" through it. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

sandlewood

You cannot always define things in terms of what they are not. Defining things as negatives can have problems. True, you might define dryness as the absence of wetness because there are only two possibilities. By ruling out wetness you’ve actually applied the positive attribute of dryness. But what if I define something as “not green”? Does that convey any meaning? It could be blue; it could be orange. You don’t know.

Now you’ve defined God as the absence of everything. That conveys no information. The only meaning one can glean from this is that God is nothing. Nothing more.

You’re not going to say next that “nothing is everything”, are you?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Sandle,
You argue: No it does not. And yes you are correct for saying so.

But then you go and blow it by asserting: You are arguing from a fish's perspective that knows nothing of dryness. To a fish, the absence of wetness "conveys no information."

But you are not a fish and you should be capable of expanding your perspective to include the concept of something other than everything. You can call this something other than everything God; or you can call it nothing... just don't call it nonsense.

If you must persist in your fishy ways, I'll send you 9 dollars and ask you to demonstrate your logical consistency by sending me back my $9 with four zeroes attached. That is $9,000. Then I will take you at your word. Then you will have proven your point at your own expense and to my reward that nothing "conveys no information."

Zero is the most useful, imaginative, and creative mathmatical symbol there is and it, too, "conveys no information." And in that nothing there is so much. Kind of like my idea of God. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic