TheGreatInfidel

False, physicality didn't begin with the world, it began with the universe.

My argument is about the causation of the the world (i.e earth) not about the causation of the universe.



Of course it could, physicality was established way before the earth was caused. You are battling a straw man.


straw!

TheGreatInfidel

The OP argument isn't suppose to prove god doesn't exists. Nor that God didn't create the universe. It only intends to prove that god didn't create the *earth*.

The implication is that, well...... If we can established that it was something other than god that created the earth...... It's downhill from there. God isn't all creating. If he isn't all creating, then why call him god? Why should we even think there is a god?

Spenser

Well, I definitely think we shouldn't think there is a God, but to continue playing the devils advocate:

Theists would probably argue that God created the universe in such a way that the laws of nature and mass that he created would explode out of the big bang and would be predestined to coalesce in such ways as to eventually form the world and us. Like setting up a very complicated set of dominos knowing exactly what was going to happen after tipping the first one.

This argument of course more supports the God of Deism or a very apologetic liberal Xian God but I can see some saying such things. They also might tend to suggest that God, even though outside of the universe has influence over it and therefore can interfere with the laws of nature as he sees fit. This is all actually nonsense to me and arguing with it I was hoping to maybe get a better understanding of the way some theists think, but ultimately I feel pretty stupid defending the position...

fishbulb

There is an analogy somewhere in here with Newtonian versus Einsteinian physics. We say that Newtonian physics only approximately describe what is going on. Fortunately, for most everyday applications, the approximations are so close that the discrepancy between prediction and observation are trivially unimportant and even difficult to measure without high precision tools. However, as one approaches the speed of light, the approximations become exponentially less accurate until they are all but useless.

Like Newtonian physics, truth and confidence are approximations and, in everyday situations, they are usually good ones. We can deduce that Socrates [was] mortal and do so with a very high degree of confidence because the level of corroboration with actual experience, both direct and indirect, is extremely high. We cannot know with absolute certainty that there are not a group of immortals hiding out somewhere (probably in New York, trying to cut off each others' heads with swords) but we have a lot of close, direct experience with humanity, a huge sample to examine, and uniformly consistent experiences regarding humanity and mortality.

When we posit the fundamental properties of existence, we are on much shakier ground. The concept of existence is much more abstract than the concept of a human being. There is only one kind of existence that any of us have had direct contact with, and existence is a much bigger subject than humanity. We can look at other human beings from the outside, but we are part of the only existence we are aware of, and so are limited to examining it from our limited vantage point from within. Some things may seem obvious, but experience also tells us that things that seem obvious from one perspective (for example: the shape of a rainbow or the "face" on Mars) are often shown to be false when viewed from another perspective.

In both cases, we cannot state with one hundred percent confidence that our premises are true, but in the former case, we can be a lot more confident that they are.

This is all related to the issue of confidence. Confidence is not related to truth or logic so much as it is related to experience. Consistency of experience builds our confidence that the experience will remain consistent in the future. Physicists trust their calculations not because they are consistent with the laws of physics but rather because, ultimately, past experience has shown that calculations which are consistent with the laws of physics are, time and time again, also consistent with observations. If you cannot ultimately correlate your conclusions with experience, then your conclusions really don't matter. This is perhaps the most astounding thing about deductive proofs of (or, less frequently, against) the existence of god. There is no way to empirically verify the argument, so we are left asking, "well, if you are right, then so what?"

Ultimately, we are creatures of experience and sensation; not of pure thought and logic, much as we may sometimes pretend to be. Everything we know is understood in terms of our senses: the way things look, smell, taste, sound, feel. We might deductively conclude that something ought to exist but, if there is no way to (directly or indirectly) sense it, it really does not matter whether or not it "really" exists.

TheGreatInfidel

HI fishbulb, thanks for the feedback. Your message is very informative, but honestly I don't see the thesis of your message nor how is it relevant to what I originally intended to do with the OP (or maybe I'm just too lazy to weed out the details of your message.).

In the latter part of your message it seems, in essence, you are saying, "Who cares about what you are asking! What you are asking is useless and irrelevant, so get off it and don't concern yourself with this kind of stuff"

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your message, but whatever it may be, if you're intent is simply to tell me that my concerns are irrelevant, then I don't see what use I have for you.

Now, I'm curious as to why you would bother replying to a post that concerns itself with a matter that you consider petty.

fishbulb

You are indeed misinterpreting my message. It is, in fact, the case that the argument is useless because the conclusion is a dead end; if we "prove" that there is or is not a god, where does that get us? Nowhere, because the conclusion is purely abstract.

But it is not the particular argument that I take objection to, but rather the whole form of argument. What does it mean to prove something if you cannot corroborate the thing you have proved with actual experience? It seems to me that it doesn't mean anything; if you cannot actually make a connection between your conclusion and real experience, then you haven't proved anything in a meaningful sense.

Your argument was:

1)Non-physical substances cannot cause physical subtances or events.
2) God is non-physical.
3) The world is physical.
4) Ergo, god did not cause the world.

Premise 1 is simply an assertion, and an untestable one at that. How could we possibly make this determination? How can we test whether or not non-physical substances can cause physical substances or events? What is a non-physical substance anyway? Aren't substances physical by definition?

Premise 2 is also an assertion, but premise 1 asserts that we could never know that premise 2 is true, because we cannot observe non-physical entities (because they cannot, by premise 1, affect the physical world).

Premise 3 is pretty uncontroversial, but of course premise 1 prevents it from being any other way: if the world wasn't physical, either premise 1 is false or we cannot interact with the world.

If your premises are true, then the conclusion is true. The argument is valid. But there is no way to test the premises to see if they are true. There is no way to corroborate the assertions with actual experience. So the premises are merely assumptions, making the conclusion an assumption too. All arguments that are based on premises which are empirically non-verifiable suffer from this (in my view critical) weakness.

TheGreatInfidel

First of all, the conclusion of my argument says nothing about the existence of god. It merely intends to show that god didn't cause the world. Secondly, a good argument that seeks to prove that god doesn't exists, abstract or not, the conclusion surely does something for me. It gives me the benefit of saying, "hey, we've proved god doesn't exists." In other words, by the same means which a theist wishes to prove there is this thing which he calls "god", I will have proven that there is no "god"; I will have played his game and beat him at it.

In turn, I can say "under god" is a false statement and a false statement shouldn't be part of the Pledge of Allegiance. Likewise, with "In God We Trust" in our currency. I can also say, that this country wasn't founded on god because there is no god etc.


It doesn't mean anything to who? To you? To me? To a logical positivist? Again, speak for yourself.


Again, meaningful to who? Are you trying to dictate what should and shouldn't be considered meaningful?

Didn't I already tell you that if you are simply replying for the sake of trying to tell me what I should consider relevant, that I have no use for you? Disregard that last statement, I think I'm beggining to enjoy our exchange.


How about this one: "All physical substances have been caused by physical substances." Is that verifiable? I ask because if it's verifiable, then I can qualify the argument in the following form:

1)All physical substances have been caused by physical substances.
2) The world is physical
3) Ergo, the world has been caused by a physical substance.
4) God is purported to be non-physical
5) Ergo, god did not cause the world.

No. A substance is anything that can instantiate properties. So, if you can establish that all properties are physical, then perhaps you can infer that substances are only physical. But I think it can only be infered with some sort of reasoning such as a deductive argument, or an inductive argument. So if you are at odds with any of these forms of reasoning, then I suppose this is irrelevant to you.

Furthermore, we would still have to verify the conclusion in experience, as you would have us believe.

Thank you.

I'm not sure I wanna open this can of worms but I'll ask anyway - can we verify in experience that George Washington is the first president of the United States?

Now, don't tell me there are documents which state that he was the first president of the United States because all that can verify in experience is that there are documents that state that he is the first president of the United States. And that's not what I'm asking for; I'm asking whether we can verify in experience that George Washington is the first president of the United States.

Edited to add: My purpose for bringing up the question of whether it can be verified in experience if George Washington is the first President of the United States, is to point out the implications of asserting that a statement is only meaningful if it can be verified in experience, as fishbulb seems to want us to believe.

Carol Massey

Never mind. Post deleted, as not to pet Great Infidel's peeve.

TheGreatInfidel

To whom and to what statement are you directing your comments to? I think you need to be more explicit as to what your analogy is supposed to be analogizing and what you hope to establish with it. In other words, my reply to your message is - what?

Edited to add: Don't be put-off by my blunt comments, it's just that flowery and inprecise language is my greatest pet peeve.

fishbulb

Let me try to put it another way:

A deductive argument does not prove anything about the real world. It makes a prediction that, if the premises are true in the real world, we will find that the conclusion is also true. Proof in the real world is, of course, a less pristine thing than proof in the abstract or mathematical sense. We cannot prove anything in the real world with absolute certainty; there are always what-if's. When we talk about proving things in the real world, we talk about approaching, not reaching, certainty. The way we reach this certainty is we corroborate our predictions with observations. The more observations we make and the more unsuccessful attempts we make to falsify our predictions, the more certain we can be that they are true.

It is possible to make predictions that you cannot corroborate. If you do this then you have no way of knowing if your premises are right. Your logic may be impeccable, but if your premises make predictions that you cannot verify, then you have no way of demonstrating that your premises are likely to be true.


How are documents, portraits, and so forth, not experiential verification? If Washington were the first President of the United States, we would expect to find evidence of this in the form of documents and other historical artifacts. These documents exist and serve to corroborate our hypothesis.

You don't have to observe Washington being president in order to know that he was. That's not the point. The point is that you do need empirical evidence to corroborate the premise. You can get empirical evidence that Washington was the first president. You cannot get empirical evidence that non-physical entities cannot affect the physical world.