The battle of evolution vs creationism

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Then you admit that your statement of "if God can't do X, and if you can think of a being that CAN do X, then that being would be God" is wrong.

The attributes have to be internally coherent, and God can't lie because if he lied, then he would not be omnibenevolent, so it is not possible for a omnibeneovelent being to lie. If you lie, then you are obviously not omnibenevolent.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

You are really good at ignoring things you don't like to hear.

Me? Wait a minute, I have been practically begging you to address the infinity problem and you continue to ignore it. So if anyone is ignoring things, it is you.

I see that LegionOnamaMoi's (fairly diplomatic, under the circumstances) attempt to show you that the mere fact that you don't understand or like something, and want to call it "nonsensical" or "absurd" or whatever, doesn't hold any water whatsoever as a counter-argument has been conveniently forgotten.

That would make a good argument if I say things are absurd or nonsensical and just simply leave it at that. But that isn't the case, and if you check my post history you would find that I explain why I think something is nonsensical or absurd. This happens more often than not.

Oh and by the way, I never said anything was absurd because I don't understand it. There hasn't been to many times that any of you said ANYTHING so complex or abstract that I didn't understand it. So please, don't flatter yourself.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Who is arguing that?

cot, legion, enaid,flame, etc.

I can't believe I had to prove the obvious here.

Seems to me the actual argument is that you have not demonstrated a first cause is required.

I mean, you keep repeating that a first cause is required, but you refuse to support your claim.

I did.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

How ridiculous. If "there were an infinite amount of hours, seconds, days, centuries" up to today this is what we call time.

Regardless of what you "call" it, it is still absurd. All of these things are infinite if the past is eternal, despite the fact that each one has different quantities. Makes no sense.

What is doing the "traversing" through your hours and days? A second time? Perhaps you think your "second time" is a little minute who runs along the "first time" minutes like a man running on a road?

The events which take place in time are coming to past, Artie. If the past is eternal, then the events which lead to your birth is infinite, so there were an infinite number of events which lead to your birth. But one cannot "arrive" at infinity...so therefore your birth would have never came to past if there were an infinite number of events which preceded it.

Your birth could only come to past if there was a boundary...a beginning to the chain at which two points can be referenced. This problem isn't going anywhere, Artie.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

How many moments are there in a second?

Don't know, don't care.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Oh I think you do, really.

Oh for heaven’s sake! If you’re presuming to argue causally to God from necessity then you first need to demonstrate that cause is necessary, which cannot be done.

I can, actually.

In any conceivable situation where object A is said to be the cause of object B the contrary is possible with no contradiction, and so cannot be necessary. And it is patently false to say the universe is necessary since there is no contradiction in conceiving every particle of matter to be annihilated and every form to be changed (Hume).

But I thought energy can neither be created nor destroyed according to the first law of thermodynamics?

But classical theism argues that God created the world ex nihilo, and it doesn’t qualify the statement by saying it wasn’t created ex materia but came from God, and in any case if God is the Supreme Being and reality itself then God cannot produce something from himself that is not-God. See examples below.

Yeah let me see the examples below, because I still don't know what you are talking about with this "God cannot produce something himself that is not-God". That is hilarious, in my opinion.

Well, creation is everything that the Supreme Being by definition is not, and is composed of accidents, degradation, imperfection, confusion, ignorance and of course finitude.

So God can't create a brick wall, with a car which drives into the brick wall? Wow.

Simply put it means everything is stopped; no movement or change in form or matter. Freeze-frame I suppose you could call it?

If movement stopped, that doesn't stop time. There would still be seconds, minutes, hours, months, years, etc after it stopped moving. I mean hell, if that is the case then God can stop time...what is so irrational about God stopping all movement and change? Why would that be so difficult. I can certainly conceive of God doing that. That is light work.

I believe I shall sleep well regardless. Indeed, I am able to think conceptually of a Supreme Being that is sufficient in all things, but the reality would only obtain logically if there were no material world and created beings to contradict and undermine that concept.

Well, if thats what you think. I don't know what more I can do, and I am only here to help

But how does any of the above overturn the contradiction? How do we conclude that God is omnibenevolent from Psalm 14:1?

We can't conclude it from Psalm 14:1, but we can conclude it from Psalm 18:30

Er…no! It isn’t. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a contingent principle.

Okkk???

Causality is a worldly phenomenon, and is only explicable in those terms, for example: force A causes movement in object B. But on another occasion it is logically possible that the same force applied to that same object, and under the same conditions, will have a completely different effect – or no effect at all. So if causality is necessary for God then God is contingent upon a worldly phenomenon and cannot on those terms be the Supreme Creator.

For the life of me cot, I just don't get it. I don't get how you are arriving at the conclusion that God cannot be the Supreme Creator if the universe exists necessarily because of his eternal will to create it.

And what is funny is...I still get the feeling that you are completely WRONG in this regard, despite not knowing why

 

[Parsimony]

The attributes have to be internally coherent, and God can't lie because if he lied, then he would not be omnibenevolent, so it is not possible for a omnibeneovelent being to lie. If you lie, then you are obviously not omnibenevolent.

Which would still make your general statement of "if God can't do X, and if you can think of a being that CAN do X, then that being would be God" incorrect. You have to apply conditions to it or make exceptions for it.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Don't know, don't care.

So you're telling me that you cannot calculate how many moments there are in a second?

How can you expect anyone to answer your earlier question?

 

[Ouroboros]

So you're telling me that you cannot calculate how many moments there are in a second?

How can you expect anyone to answer your earlier question?

Moments are "kinds" of seconds. Didn't you know?

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Which would still make your general statement of "if God can't do X, and if you can think of a being that CAN do X, then that being would be God" incorrect. You have to apply conditions to it or make exceptions for it.

That is why in the beginning of the argument the definition of God is clearly defined and there are no "conditions", but rather certain things like lying would be inconsistent with such a being's nature.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

So you're telling me that you cannot calculate how many moments there are in a second?

Me knowing or not knowing how many moments there are in second does nothing to refute the argument that I present, so therefore, such a question is completely irrelevant, so much so that I don't even know why I am wasting key strokes on the matter.

How can you expect anyone to answer your earlier question?

Irrelevant. If I asked you how many seconds there are in a minute and if you give the correct answer you will receive a million bucks, would you answer "60", or would you say, "Hmmm, well....I don't know, it depends on how many moments there are in a second."

Bogus. All of this is a diversion to take away the infinite problem. If you people were drowning in the middle of an ocean, the infinity problem is the brick tied to your ankles.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Me? Wait a minute, I have been practically begging you to address the infinity problem and you continue to ignore it.

Yeah, nice try-

That it is counter-intuitive is the best that anyone (Craig, Thomas, etc etc) has ever showed; but being counter-intuitive is not the same as being absurd- it is not logically contradictory. This is essentially WLC doublespeak; in logic, an argument is "absurd" iff it is self-contradictory, but colloquially we will talk about something being "absurd" if it is merely weird , or counter-intuitive. Craig shows that infinities are weird, and then expects this to count as a logical reductio ad absurdum; unfortunately, he is merely equivocating, he has not shown them to be absurd in the logical sense, i.e. self-contradictory. But then, nobody is going to deny that infinities are going to be weird or counter-intuitive; who would expect otherwise?

So if anyone is ignoring things, it is you.

Nah. Ironic that you should make this accusation in a post where you are ignoring virtually everything though.

That would make a good argument if I say things are absurd or nonsensical and just simply leave it at that. But that isn't the case, and if you check my post history you would find that I explain why I think something is nonsensical or absurd.

You mean like this-

Nonsensical. If there isn't a first cause, then there were an infinite amount of hours, seconds, days, centuries which had to be traversed in order to reach today.

This is pretty much what you've done here; you restate the claim, but call it "nonsensical"- this is not an argument.

Oh and by the way, I never said anything was absurd because I don't understand it.

Um, yes, you did (you have a very short memory- roll the thread back a page or two, you must've done it like 5 or 6 times!)

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Yeah, nice try-

Nah. Ironic that you should make this accusation in a post where you are ignoring virtually everything though.

All you've done is tell me what Craig "hasn't demonstrated", without explaining why what is being said is false. That is what I am looking for...a reason why what I am saying is false, and so far, no one has been able to do such.

So instead of dancing around the subject, directly tell me how an actual infinite can exist in reality...and you can do that by explaining how the event of your birth can come to past if there were an infinite number of events preceding it.

This is pretty much what you've done here; you restate the claim, but call it "nonsensical"- this is not an argument.

Wait a minute; you quoted me saying "nonsensical"...but I just want to know am I seeing things when I read

"If there isn't a first cause, then there were an infinite amount of hours, seconds, days, centuries which had to be traversed in order to reach today."

Maybe I am seeing things.

Um, yes, you did (you have a very short memory- roll the thread back a page or two, you must've done it like 5 or 6 times!)

I said I didn't understand it because it appeared to be nonsense (no disrespect to cot)...I didn't say I didn't understand it because it wasn't nonsense, it just went over my head.

Big difference there, buddy. Nice try though. Like I said, eventually I will let you win an argument...but I just don't think I am ready to give you that luxury yet.

In the meantime, lets smoke :cigar:

 

[Enai de a lukal]

All you've done is tell me what Craig "hasn't demonstrated", without explaining why what is being said is false.

I'm not necessarily saying it's false- Craig endeavors to show that infinities are weird, and counter-intuitive, and I agree with him, so far as that goes. But being weird or counter-intuitive is not the same thing as being logically absurd (self-contradictory), and in physics, being weird isn't really any objection. Our best theories in physics are extremely weird and counter-intuitive (QM, relativity).

That is what I am looking for...a reason why what I am saying is false, and so far, no one has been able to do such.

What you are saying (that there must be a first cause because otherwise there would be an infinite regression and there cannot be one) is mistaken, for the reasons I've mentioned; there could be a universe that is not past-eternal, but does not have any transcendent first cause (as in the Hawking-Hartle proposal), and nobody has ever successfully ruled out an infinite regression as either logically or empirically false in the first place.

So instead of dancing around the subject, directly tell me how an actual infinite can exist in reality...

You've had this covered at some length at least once already, with LegionOnamaMoi...

and you can do that by explaining how the event of your birth can come to past if there were an infinite number of events preceding it.

I'm not sure where the problem is; one moment, then the next, then the next, then my birth, then some more moments, and so on. I'm afraid if you want a solution to a problem, you have to say what that problem is supposed to be.

Wait a minute; you quoted me saying "nonsensical"...but I just want to know am I seeing things when I read

"If there isn't a first cause, then there were an infinite amount of hours, seconds, days, centuries which had to be traversed in order to reach today."

Maybe I am seeing things.

Yeah, you're seeing yourself restate the claim in question ("if there isn't a first cause, then there were an infinite amount..."), and pronounce it "nonsensical". This is not an argument, and this is precisely what you have now denied doing. And yet, here you are quoted as doing it.

I said I didn't understand it because it appeared to be nonsense (no disrespect to cot)...I didn't say I didn't understand it because it wasn't nonsense, it just went over my head.

Big difference there, buddy. Nice try though. Like I said, eventually I will let you win an argument...but I just don't think I am ready to give you that luxury yet.

In the meantime, lets smoke :cigar:

Here's a tip: if you have to claim to have won an argument, you probably didn't actually win anything. In the meantime, focus less on patting yourself on the back despite not having done anything, and more on coming up with substantive responses and arguments.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Me knowing or not knowing how many moments there are in second does nothing to refute the argument that I present, so therefore, such a question is completely irrelevant, so much so that I don't even know why I am wasting key strokes on the matter.

Actually, it's very relevant, since you asked this:

And to help demonstrate the analogy, all I have to do is ask you how many moments were there which lead up to the change?

Since you admit that you cannot accurately measure a "moment", this question above is nonsensical.

Irrelevant. If I asked you how many seconds there are in a minute and if you give the correct answer you will receive a million bucks, would you answer "60", or would you say, "Hmmm, well....I don't know, it depends on how many moments there are in a second."

Bogus. All of this is a diversion to take away the infinite problem. If you people were drowning in the middle of an ocean, the infinity problem is the brick tied to your ankles.

So how many moments are there in a second? Is it less than infinity? If it's less than infinity, you should be able to give us an exact number. Can you do that?

 

[Parsimony]

That is why in the beginning of the argument the definition of God is clearly defined and there are no "conditions", but rather certain things like lying would be inconsistent with such a being's nature.

Perhaps that would be the case for an all-good god, but I don't see how the MGB argument in itself must assume that a god is all-good. One must be careful not to equivocate the different definitions of "great", i.e. great as in "good" and great as in "powerful". I believe in God, but I don't think the MGB argument has much merit, as it basically poses the existence of something simply because we are capable of imagining its existence.

Wait, what has any of this stuff to do with evolution?

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Perhaps that would be the case for an all-good god, but I don't see how the MGB argument in itself must assume that a god is all-good. One must be careful not to equivocate the different definitions of "great", i.e. great as in "good" and great as in "powerful". I believe in God, but I don't think the MGB argument has much merit, as it basically poses the existence of something simply because we are capable of imagining its existence.

Of course, because of this, the same objection which applied to Anselm's original ontological argument (Gaunilo's point about the perfect island) can be reformulated with respect to Plantinga's MOA: if the argument is sound, then it can be used to prove the existence of an arbitrarily indefinite number of necessarily existent things, all of which are imaginary (since we can make them up as we go along). We can simply stipulate that there is some entity E, which is maximally great in every respect except one (what particular respect is arbitrary), which possibly necessarily exists- and then prove that such a being necessarily exists. And we can keep making up such entities, and proving they exist. Unfortunately, however, all of these entities are necessary beings- their existence is necessary if it is possible; but then, there are necessary beings other than God, which, by definition, do not depend on God for their existence- they are necessary. But if they do not depend on God for their existence, not only does this contradict traditional Christian doctrine, it contradicts the original premise of the MOA- that God is the MGB- since, as these less than maximally great necessary beings do not depend on God for their existence, some other entity upon which everything does depend for its existence would be greater than God. The result is that there could be a being that is greater than God, the maximally great being- a contradiction.

This is yet another fatal refutation of the MOA (we're just piling them on here), and is the one advanced by Kane in his paper on the subject.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Actually, it's very relevant, since you asked this:

And to help demonstrate the analogy, all I have to do is ask you how many moments were there which lead up to the change?

Since you admit that you cannot accurately measure a "moment", this question above is nonsensical.

See, thats the point, however many moments there were, it would be INFINITE. So even if you know how many moments there are in a second, or how many moments there are in an hour etc...if the past is eternal, then there would be an infinite number of moments which lead to any event X. So once again, knowing or not knowing how many moments there are in a second is completely meaningless.

So how many moments are there in a second? Is it less than infinity? If it's less than infinity, you should be able to give us an exact number. Can you do that?

Any discription of time you use would not negate the arguments that can be used against actual infinites.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

I'm not necessarily saying it's false

Well, the arguments that he give in this regard are either true, or false. That is the point...if they are false, then they are necessarily false and there is no objection you can throw out there that will do you any justice.

Craig endeavors to show that infinities are weird, and counter-intuitive, and I agree with him, so far as that goes. But being weird or counter-intuitive is not the same thing as being logically absurd (self-contradictory), and in physics, being weird isn't really any objection. Our best theories in physics are extremely weird and counter-intuitive (QM, relativity).

Deal with the argument. If you can't offer a meaningful objection to it, then just simply admit that the argument is more plausible than its negations. Spare me the semantic word games.

What you are saying (that there must be a first cause because otherwise there would be an infinite regression and there cannot be one) is mistaken, for the reasons I've mentioned; there could be a universe that is not past-eternal, but does not have any transcendent first cause (as in the Hawking-Hartle proposal)

First off, Dr. Craig already offered objections to the Hawking-Hartle model in his public and written work, so once again, deal with the argument. Second, even if the model doesn't have a transcendent first cause, I fail to see how this negates the problem with infinity...there would still be an infinite number of events preceding every effect. That isn't going anyway.

, and nobody has ever successfully ruled out an infinite regression as either logically or empirically false in the first place.

Oh please, I've seen many people object to this. You can do this by using analogies, and if infinite regression wont work in the analogies, then it can't work in reality.

You've had this covered at some length at least once already, with LegionOnamaMoi...

You are certainly right, I did, but I don't think he offered a rejection that I can't respond to. But I am not talking to him, I am talking to YOU, but if you think he did offer a good enough objection, then quote me what he said that you think was so spectacular...and we can take it from there.

See, you don't even have to use your own argument...would that make it better?

I'm not sure where the problem is; one moment, then the next, then the next, then my birth, then some more moments, and so on. I'm afraid if you want a solution to a problem, you have to say what that problem is supposed to be.

Ok, so if I told you that you will soon become a millionaire, but the only issue is it will take an infinite number of days for the money to be deposited in your account, and you wait...at what day would you receive the money?

You just said "one moment, then the next, then the next, etc"....so if you waited one day, and then the next, and then the next....what day would you receive the money?

Yeah, you're seeing yourself restate the claim in question ("if there isn't a first cause, then there were an infinite amount..."), and pronounce it "nonsensical". This is not an argument, and this is precisely what you have now denied doing. And yet, here you are quoted as doing it.

Then I guess I am seeing things then.

Here's a tip: if you have to claim to have won an argument, you probably didn't actually win anything. In the meantime, focus less on patting yourself on the back despite not having done anything, and more on coming up with substantive responses and arguments.

Oh, you dont want to smoke? Fine, more for me then :cigar:

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Perhaps that would be the case for an all-good god, but I don't see how the MGB argument in itself must assume that a god is all-good.

Well, that would depend...do you believe in objective moral value?

One must be careful not to equivocate the different definitions of "great", i.e. great as in "good" and great as in "powerful". I believe in God, but I don't think the MGB argument has much merit, as it basically poses the existence of something simply because we are capable of imagining its existence.

Well, since the argument is not necessarily based on what we can imagine, the above statement is meaningless.

Wait, what has any of this stuff to do with evolution?

Dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats, anything else is bio-babble.