ManTimeForgot
Temporally Challenged
It is a distinction which makes a great deal of difference IF and WHEN we consider the origination/maintenance of reality. It makes no difference in practical matters as it has no discernible impact on the content of the laws of physics or the probabilities of what happens.
Yes, it is absurd to posit the existence of "God," just as I told you before. It is also equally absurd to posit the lack of existence of "God," for the very same reasons. No logical discourse on "God" is possible, period. Pure fiction? It is entirely certain that "God" and pure fiction are utterly indistinguishable. You cannot distinguish between reality existing and reality not existing because there wouldn't be any actors to do the test if reality did not exist. So, it is literally not possible to do any test to see if "God" is necessary. Since you cannot do a test either, then that means taking the position that it is necessarily false must by definition be absurd.
As I pointed out before: It is metaphysically impossible to distinguish between the agency of an omnipotent being and reality as it is. The only possible definition of "God" that might leave "evidence" is if there existed a maximal being (said being possessed the maximum possible or was in someway distinguished metaphysically in all traits allowed to exist. Such a being I might consider labeling "God," simply for ease of discussion, but how would you go about looking for this being?
Looking for such a being is so far outside the scope of human endeavor as to be ludicrous. Exactly what consequences could possibly be attributable to an intellect that is "maximal?" How would you even recognize patterns that were conceivably so complex as to define the whole universe? Perhaps the patterns utilized by such a being are complex enough to define everything everywhere (its intellect would allow it to potentially anything it chose simply through cause and effect made correctly); How do you know that we aren't being manipulated in some remote way through the causal agency of something any entire "Multiverse" away from us? Moreover, Systems do not necessarily have the same properties that elements of that system possess; so we can't even generalize our own or observed properties in order to try and identify properties at the "Universal" level (or "Multiversal). Sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from magic; sufficiently advanced agency becomes indistinguishable from the agency of the universe is an effective corollary to this. If you are not possessed of sufficient sensory and detection faculties, then you cannot differentiate between agency and either random information or the universe simply acting as it is supposed to do.
Intelligent Design is not completely unfalsifiable like "First Cause" is. You could conceivably invent time travel or time viewing and set about trying to evidence the position one way or the other. However, at this point attempting to investigate Intelligent Design is squarely outside the scope of human endeavor. We do not have any other examples of life that we can compare to our own, and the pattern matching faculties we are using are our own, so any patterns native to an extra-terrestrial intelligence/agency would by necessity be non-distinctive to us, since that is the way things have always been as near as we can tell.
Case in point: Some of the investigations into Mars and the origination of life posit the formation of life happening first on Mars (since it was further away it cooled down sufficiently to be able to support life before Earth did), and that life managed to be conveyed to Earth from Mars. Now the presumed vehicle in this case is an intra-stellar object of some kind (comet or meteor), but we don't actually possess any method of testing for alien spacecraft either (its just assumed to be far less likely as a matter of probability since in our experience extra-terrestrials are not intervening in our solar system to the best of our available evidence). Moreover, there isn't any way to distinguish between an alien purposefully directing a cometary collision to result in material being ejected towards earth from the result of random chance.
Since systems do not necessarily possess all the properties that elements of that system possess we cannot be certain that Reality must abide by the same laws we do or observe. Why are you so certain that tautology, contradiction, law of the excluded middle, etc apply to Reality? You aren't allowed to generalize the properties you see around you (even ones that are imperative), so what reason do you have to be certain of this? Reality might spontaneously generate itself; reality might be created; reality might be eternal and omnipresent; reality might be eternal and a completely self-contained system with hard and fast boundaries. I do not know how or why you think you can safely differentiate amongst those possibilities.
I've never been in a separate Reality from my current one to the best of my knowledge. I can't point to a separate Reality for basis of comparison. So how exactly is someone supposed to know what properties are directly attributable to Reality? Just because it makes senses to our intellect doesn't mean it is applicable or necessary. I might be 80% confidant that there isn't a "First Cause," but that is far and away from the level of confidence needed to discount a possibility.
MTF
Yes, it is absurd to posit the existence of "God," just as I told you before. It is also equally absurd to posit the lack of existence of "God," for the very same reasons. No logical discourse on "God" is possible, period. Pure fiction? It is entirely certain that "God" and pure fiction are utterly indistinguishable. You cannot distinguish between reality existing and reality not existing because there wouldn't be any actors to do the test if reality did not exist. So, it is literally not possible to do any test to see if "God" is necessary. Since you cannot do a test either, then that means taking the position that it is necessarily false must by definition be absurd.
As I pointed out before: It is metaphysically impossible to distinguish between the agency of an omnipotent being and reality as it is. The only possible definition of "God" that might leave "evidence" is if there existed a maximal being (said being possessed the maximum possible or was in someway distinguished metaphysically in all traits allowed to exist. Such a being I might consider labeling "God," simply for ease of discussion, but how would you go about looking for this being?
Looking for such a being is so far outside the scope of human endeavor as to be ludicrous. Exactly what consequences could possibly be attributable to an intellect that is "maximal?" How would you even recognize patterns that were conceivably so complex as to define the whole universe? Perhaps the patterns utilized by such a being are complex enough to define everything everywhere (its intellect would allow it to potentially anything it chose simply through cause and effect made correctly); How do you know that we aren't being manipulated in some remote way through the causal agency of something any entire "Multiverse" away from us? Moreover, Systems do not necessarily have the same properties that elements of that system possess; so we can't even generalize our own or observed properties in order to try and identify properties at the "Universal" level (or "Multiversal). Sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from magic; sufficiently advanced agency becomes indistinguishable from the agency of the universe is an effective corollary to this. If you are not possessed of sufficient sensory and detection faculties, then you cannot differentiate between agency and either random information or the universe simply acting as it is supposed to do.
Intelligent Design is not completely unfalsifiable like "First Cause" is. You could conceivably invent time travel or time viewing and set about trying to evidence the position one way or the other. However, at this point attempting to investigate Intelligent Design is squarely outside the scope of human endeavor. We do not have any other examples of life that we can compare to our own, and the pattern matching faculties we are using are our own, so any patterns native to an extra-terrestrial intelligence/agency would by necessity be non-distinctive to us, since that is the way things have always been as near as we can tell.
Case in point: Some of the investigations into Mars and the origination of life posit the formation of life happening first on Mars (since it was further away it cooled down sufficiently to be able to support life before Earth did), and that life managed to be conveyed to Earth from Mars. Now the presumed vehicle in this case is an intra-stellar object of some kind (comet or meteor), but we don't actually possess any method of testing for alien spacecraft either (its just assumed to be far less likely as a matter of probability since in our experience extra-terrestrials are not intervening in our solar system to the best of our available evidence). Moreover, there isn't any way to distinguish between an alien purposefully directing a cometary collision to result in material being ejected towards earth from the result of random chance.
Since systems do not necessarily possess all the properties that elements of that system possess we cannot be certain that Reality must abide by the same laws we do or observe. Why are you so certain that tautology, contradiction, law of the excluded middle, etc apply to Reality? You aren't allowed to generalize the properties you see around you (even ones that are imperative), so what reason do you have to be certain of this? Reality might spontaneously generate itself; reality might be created; reality might be eternal and omnipresent; reality might be eternal and a completely self-contained system with hard and fast boundaries. I do not know how or why you think you can safely differentiate amongst those possibilities.
I've never been in a separate Reality from my current one to the best of my knowledge. I can't point to a separate Reality for basis of comparison. So how exactly is someone supposed to know what properties are directly attributable to Reality? Just because it makes senses to our intellect doesn't mean it is applicable or necessary. I might be 80% confidant that there isn't a "First Cause," but that is far and away from the level of confidence needed to discount a possibility.
MTF
