Kantian

Most certainly. Thomas stated that he thought gratuitious evil exists. You interpreted two things:

• that this was an indirect proof of a universal moral standard.
• therefore, the existence of a moral standard is only possible with the existence of God.

The two inferences i've listed were derived illegitimately, and you have not succeeded in demonstrating how these inferences do not caricaturize Thomas' original statement. Ergo, your bad argument remains a mind-numbing example of a strawman.

No, not in the least- an illegitimate move is committed when you disingenuously misrepresent your opponent's position, and to which you have not mounted a coherent objection to, so far. If making logical fallacies does not bother you, that you do not care that you are presenting a horrid example of theism to the unbelievers here, i am afraid you are not a very good debator but a troll.

So you say, my good bullentin board friend, so you say! But this assertion has little to no support beyond the illegitimate inferences which i've outlined above.



[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Immanuel Kant ]</p>

Synaesthesia

One-eyed Jack,
The argument fails to overcome UDP as a counter. In fact, I would be very surprised if it didn’t fail, more than surprised, incredulous. As I pointed out before, the point of God is to break the rules. Which rules can or need be broken is an issue we can simply leave to God.

The theoretical vacuity of such an idea is manifest, but that also means that there is in principle nothing that can refute God. We need only recognize that this is a weakness, not a strength.

SOMMS,
Muttered or not, that objection is clearly relevant, if not the strongest one. It implies that the first cause argument is unsound because there logically need be no first cause. Secondly, no argument within the ‘prime mover’ genre establishes the intelligence of the prime mover. An unintelligent prime mover does just as well.

The stronger argument is that there is no need for a first mover. Normal causation is going to break down (barring the ol’ regress) somewhere. Since we can conceive of unbounded but finite universes, (one of many examples of causal breakdown requiring no first mover) the essential premise of the argument is known to be false.

Unto itself, the argument fails in it’s objective. It proves neither a first cause, nor an intelligent first cause.

That given a value system there are better and worse ways to morally implement it proves that there is objective morality. Comparing value systems is a difficult task and there may be ambiguities in principle. As such, there is no way to establish the existence of a monolithic moral law without having a coherent system of value-translation. However, as I pointed out, morality can be and obviously is objective. No God attached.

That it is amazing presupposes all this global evidence. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of written ‘documents’ describing all sorts of hooey, baloney, miracles, charlatanry and utter nonsense. You claim that you have seen especially convincing evidence, but I have seen nothing that distinguished your claim from all the other delusion to which billions of people are prone. I have seen only a theory so unwieldy that it cannot be buttressed by all the evidence in the world.

Thomas Metcalf:
I think it’s more serious flaw is it’s treatment of counterfactuals. It gives us no reason to think that a “blind universe that causes life” is any more likely than an “anthropomorphic universe that causes life”, given that both are assured to cause life.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

I'm afraid I'm starting to sympathize with that conclusion, too. In this thread and another I'm engaged with a very competent opposition in Philip Osborne, but it's nice to take a break from that once in a while and refute SOMMS' claims. I do certainly hope that SOMMS is not, in fact, a troll, but if (s)he is, I've had some fun stretching my debating muscles, at least.

TooBad

Illustrated where?

Your argument: The universe contains life. The probability of a life-supporting universe occurring at random is so low that we are forced to assume the existence of a divine architect.

Lottery Fallacy: Fred Bloggs won the lottery last week. The probability of Fred Bloggs winning the lottery by sheer luck was so low that we are forced to assume the existence of some devious tampering.

Kantian

I draw the "troll" conclusion not from this thread alone, despite repeated attempts of identifying the fallacies which SOMMS has consistently produced, that he or she takes no effort whatsoever in recognizing how terrible of a job he/she is defending theism with bad arguments, but from the previous threads SOMMS has participated in as well.

I am glad you found a worthy opponent in Phillip, but sadly theists like SOMMS and their bad arguments are the norm and do nothing to increase the knowledge. Many apologies for taking the thread off-topic, if i have already.

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Immanuel Kant ]</p>

randomsyllable

Correction. There is no requirement for a winner. Weeks go by with no winner.

Likewise, I would argue that the characteristics of a "universe" as is generally defined include the nescessary prerequisites for life. I thought the argument was better stated in regards to individual planets. However, at that point the probability is much greater considering the hypothetical number of planets in the universe.

Besides, if you argue that an "unknowable" universe exists with characteristics completely different from our own, then you have no basis to concieve of life, or more importantly, the lack thereof.

-random

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

TooBad,
Uh...?

No. This is not my argument at all. See below.

The lottery (as you pose) is not analogous to the FTA in this way: *ANY* person who wins (doesn't matter who) represents a life-friendly universe.


If this was the case notice that the probability of life-friendly universe happening = probability of someone winning lottery (doesn't matter who) = 1.


This is in no way analogous to the inital conditions of the universe in which almost all configurations of physical constants yield a universe completely devoid of life.

To make your lottery analogy fit the FTA you must seperate the lottery players into 2 classes...the 99,999,999,998 that represent non-life friendly universes (red) and the 2 that represent life friendly universes (blue).

If blue comes up we can statistically say with all confidence that we should reject the hypothesis that this happened at random.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Devilnaut

Can you please explain how you arrived at these numbers?

Thanks,

devilnaut

Pomp

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas,

To make your lottery analogy fit the FTA you must seperate the lottery players into 2 classes...the 99,999,999,998 that represent non-life friendly universes (red) and the 2 that represent life friendly universes (blue).

If blue comes up we can statistically say with all confidence that we should reject the hypothesis that this happened at random.

The problem with this, of course, is that you have no grounds by which to conclude that "life-friendliness" is somehow a special feature in need of explanation. Nearly any possible Universe will contain some unusual feature that could serve as the "blue" outcome in your illustration.

One-eyed Jack

Quick notes on cosmology:

1. It is possible that the genesis for the big bang was a random, acausal quantum fluction in no-space and no-time. Before SOMMS shouts that no-space and no-time is impossible and all that, please understand that this is a physics hypothesis which is expressed mathematically and the description in English is by necessity incomplete.

This describes a physical origin for the universe which explicitly avoids any Prime Mover.

2. It is also possible that less than a millisecond after the big bang event parts of the universe collapsed into discrete domains with their own sets of physical constants: domains which were constituted such that they expanded rapidly persisted, others remained miniscule or collapsed. This produces a near-infinite array of domains, of which our "domain-universe" is one, with differing properties.

It is no surprise the laws of our "domain-universe" are fine-tuned for life: we do not exist in the others because we CANNOT exist there.

Synaesthesia: Yes, if one defines God as external to time and space (and especially if He is irrational to boot) then no evidence we can perceive within time and space can either prove or disprove His existence. The argument from non-belief, and the arguement from evil, both assume that we can in fact know something meaningful about God based on the evidence of the universe.

Playing in that ballpark, I think it's a strong argument. Outside the ballpark nothing works anyway.