EAllusion wrote:I'd love to hear your justification that the universe, as in the whole of reality, is contingent while God is a necessary being CC. There's absolutely no reason to presume God's Godlike properties (personhood to be more specific) are required to exempt a problem created by thews. In this case, he's focusing on existence existing.
The universe is contingent because it need not be the way it is. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei
(I lost access to my Milesius account, so I had to retrieve this one from the mothballs.)
Reading comprehension fail, Jihadist. EA didn't ask you how you could say that the universe was contingent. He asked you how you could say that AND simultaneously say that God is a necessary being -- a challenge that is quite different from the one you triumphantly claimed to meet.
JohnStuartMill wrote:Reading comprehension fail, Jihadist. EA didn't ask you how you could say that the universe was contingent. He asked you how you could say that AND simultaneously say that God is a necessary being -- a challenge that is quite different from the one you triumphantly claimed to meet.
It was a silly question as posed, junior.
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei
(I lost access to my Milesius account, so I had to retrieve this one from the mothballs.)
JohnStuartMill wrote:I really hope that you're better at statistics than you are at logic.
I'd say the same about you and political science but who cares about polisci? :D
Any statement concerning the nature of the universe is informed by physics, an empirical science. By way of contrast, statements concerning the nature of God are not really amenable to empirical science and can only be (formally) argued in the context of mathematical logic. In mathematical logic, one sets forth axioms, defines God, and then seeks to prove He exists. Kurt Gödel did just that, and I think He was successful. One of the consequences of Gödel's Ontological Argument is that God is a necessary being. Thus, all I needed to do was write "See Gödel's Ontological Argument" but that would have been superfluous because EA already knows I accept Gödel's Ontological Argument. He also should know that any God I posit would be a necessary being. He can't do the same for the universe because he has to take physics into account. He is welcome to try to argue the universe is necessary if he takes physics into account but not otherwise.
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei
(I lost access to my Milesius account, so I had to retrieve this one from the mothballs.)
Okay, so you ARE going to do more than dismissively wave EA's argument away. Good -- now there's actually something to argue against.
It's not an immediate given that the rules of logic hold at all times and all places, but I'll push my controversial empiricism under the rug for now. The problem with you saying that Godel's ontological argument is not contingent is that, while the validity of deductive arguments doesn't have anything to do with what we observe (at least, according to non-empiricist views of logic), the truth of their premises, and therefore their soundness, in fact does require reference to observations. Remember Axiom 5 of Godel's argument, that necessary existence is a positive predicate? That's not a given of mathematical logic -- there's no reason to think that the rules of logic would be different if necessary existence were instead considered to not necessarily be a positive predicate. And you need to be able to say that if you want Godel's argument to be unsullied with the non-logical.
But again, remember that the rules of logic are only sacrosanct because they press so strongly on our minds. And because our minds are a part of the universe, too, then appealing to the rules of logic is just a roundabout way of appealing to what is, in your view, a contingent entity.
I wasn't talking about the physical universe in part because I was anticipating an ontological argument in return. Of course, if you could establish that God is a necessary being, you wouldn't need a cosmological argument to establish its existence. The ontological argument would suffice. And modal contingency of the universe - the assertion that it logically could not exist - doesn't make a case for a personal necessary cause anymore than it does an impersonal one. And you need the necessity of the personal to infer to God. So CC here basically just changed the subject to a preferred argument of his, and thus did not address my core response to thews. I think that's what matters here. If thews really wants to rest his hat on the ontological argument of all things, more power to him. That's obviously not what he was doing in this thread, though.
Boom! I bet you never thought this would pop back up.
Tchild wrote:Atheism is merely a label that most closely approximates how a believer stands once their anthropormorphic Mormon God dissolves into the ether.
word!
I am an atheist the second a word escapes the lips of a theist in the attempt to describe that God, but am a theist of sorts as long as God remains in the realm of higher dimensional reality not able to be understood by the human mind.
I feel feel ya. :)
Good thing Tarski doesn't post here, because he might challenge me on what I mean by "higher dimensional realities". I would only respond by saying, Tarski, come smoke a joint with me, and I will let you experience it for yourself.
I'm already "experienced" and I already know what you mean. But thanks. . . ..
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
