This assumes, of course, that our human understandings of causality apply to the universe and whatever meta-universe it exists in, if any. For all we know our conventional understanding of causality might be flawed. We might not be physically able of comprehending the true basis of causality.
Right, if you don’t believe God exists, by claiming you “don’t believe in God” gives validity to God’s existence; that he actually exists but you simply don’t believe in him.
Sure you did. You assumed my positive theistic view necessarily implied a religious view.
(bolding mine)
Yes, that is my point. And you funnel back far enough and you get that which had no previous cause, i.e., the Prime Mover.
First, the piece of evidence you acknowledge is mighty important. As far as other evidence, it may or may not exist. If we find it, great, as it will end some arguing. If not, as I suspect, that’s fine. For the record, I have not expressed any opinion as to whether or not there is evidence or the quality of it. I will say that there is nothing that should be considered conclusive.
Huh? Your QED is a bit presumptuous, don’t you think? You’ve asserted plenty, assumed more, but have *proven *nothing.
Well, that makes any discussion moot then, doesn’t it. If the logic that guides our very thought processes and discussion can change to one of a trillion unknown logic models, there’s not much point in discussing anything. But do you really think that in some other universe 2+2 will not equal 4? That x can be equal to x+1? That this will not hold true:
All humans are mortal
Dibble is human
Therefore, Dibble is Mortal
?
Yeah, there are a lot of mights. There might be a God, there might not. For me, the proposition that there is no Prime Mover and there is something that can operate outside the rules of causality is MUCH harder to allow than the apparent necessity of a First Cause.
Logic is defined as the rules of valid inference. There is actually more than one system of logic: some logical systems do not include the law of the excluded middle, for example.
I’d have to think harder about which logical systems are null, collapsing due to internal contradictions and which are workable, but fail to apply to this universe. (BTW, I won’t think harder about this, as it is way outside my area of knowledge).
Well a circle might be defined as a line without a beginning or an end.
I might also note that while we have an intuitive sense of causality, we have not defined that term here. (Furthermore, it’s not that easy to describe: necessary and sufficient conditions don’t do the idea justice.)
No, there is still no requirement for a Prime Mover. Our universe may or may not have been caused from elsewhere - nothing prevents an outside cause, but nothing requires it. The same for other universes. It may be turtles a lot of the way down, but not all the way.
If our universe does have net zero energy, no laws are violated by an uncaused creation.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. But while we may move the line as to what we would consider fallacies, the logic that is derived from mathematical principles, set theory, etc. I think will hold up.
Okay, I’ll give it a stab: The relationship between two events, one former, one latter, where the former event directly results in the latter occurring.
What does this mean?
I’ve assumed nothing, and haven’t set out to prove anything. I’m talking about what we can’t know. Physics tells us Time begins with the Big Bang. There is no “before the Big Bang”. So outside of our universe, we don’t know how time works, if at all. In other universes, it may run backwards, it may skip alternate seconds, everything might happen at once, it may do the hokey-pokey. We don’t, and can’t, know. That’s what I mean by the in-this-universe law of causality not holding outside this universe. There may be other causalities, there may be a meta-law, but we can’t say. We can only talk about causality within the universe we know. Unfortunately, that means we can’t talk meaningfully about a cause for the Universe we know.
Not as long as we stick to the universe we know, no, it doesn’t. It’s only when one presumes to talk about anything outside the universe that any knowing or even guessing becomes impossible.
Only if you’re planning on going to another universe, which is definitionally impossible. It’s not going to suddenly change here.
Yes, it might not.
Again, yes it might.
Yes, there might be a logic (I suspect there were attempts at formulating such logics even on this Earth) where that doesn’t hold - where the notion of modus ponens is not supported. Possibly because there’s no stable sets, so statements like “all humans” are meaningless, a category error. But I can’t say how such a logic would look, bound as I am in this universe.
Plus, that’s a valid argument, but that doesn’t speak to its truth, BTW. Sentient Meat’s been shaming me into being a bit stricter with the language of logic up in here.
Don’t we all? C’mon, admit it, we all pray to have at least one group sex experience before we die.
That while each universe might be supported on the back of (created from) another, it has got to start somewhere.
Unless of course time is circular. I’ve never seen that hypothesized, but it would be a good sf story.
Turtle joke: I’m familiar with the Scalia variant:
Just as there are multiple logical systems, there are also multiple geometries, based upon different axioms. There is no “true” geometry. The Euclidian variant for example models the every-day world well, but doesn’t play nice with Einstein.
Is there an ultimate metalogic? I honestly don’t know, but Wikipedia has a stub on the subject.
Show me an effect with one cause. “Directly results” is a synonym for causality: you haven’t really defined it. (Or maybe you have, see below.)
Here’s an essay on causation. I’ve read the first 4 paragraphs of it.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-process/
Oo! Here’s another:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/
And a third! With Hume’s definition of causality!
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/
Tut, tut Hume!
And, apropos nothing, here’s Stanford’s take on God as a necessary being:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-necessary-being/
Apologies for the flippant tone: it’s just I know very little about this. It’s not easy material.
I don’t think you disproved the point here. There’s no reason to think that equations adequate to deal with a two dimensional world will work in a three dimensional world. That does not, though, invalidate, the dependability of those equations for two dimensions. Similarly, just because a series of equations and relationships might not work in an extra-three dimensional world does not invalidate those equations either. We need additional equations that embrace the relationships as they might exist when this other dimension(s) is taken into account. In other words, if you went to another world with additional dimensions, the Pathagorean Theorem would still hold true when trying to understand the two-dimensional aspect of your new world.
Maybe we have different definitions of “definition”. I think it works fine. What are you looking for?
I found your second link of the three to be the most interesting. BUt the totality of them has caused my brain to glaze over.
Yeah, that is a different argument. Not one that I’ve made.
True, we cannot KNOW. But does it not make sense to think that the laws that logic itself would hold up on other worlds. There is no reason to believe otherwise. Sure, we should make allowance for it, but why shouldn’t the assumption be that they do?
So, we even entertain it. Seriously. You are turning a blind eye to a wealth of knowledge. As I said, I understand making the allowance, but the assumptive position should be that logic would work every bit as well. The Pathagorean theory will be just as valuable understanding two dimensions whether your world has three or thirteen. No? Why not?
It doesn’t attempt to. (One of Measure to Measure’s links touched on this.) It’s a commentary on the relationships of the items only. Not the factual reality of them. It’s validity would hold up every bit as well, while it’s truthiness 
be just as suspect.
I’m confused. That’s MY point: that you need a beginning. ANd that beginning, by definition, must not necessitate that something else started IT. That’s God, baby.
Or am I not seeing your point?
No you don’t. In any case, I don’t see how making the Prime Mover supernatural rather than natural sidesteps the (non-)argument one whit: what laws govern the nature and existence of Prime Movers of any kind?
And I can’t believe you’re still positing the eye as a possible instance of Intelligent Design, nearly 150 years after Darwin addressed it himself.
But why call it god? God generally is considered to have characteristics such as omnipotence and omniscience, or at least will and sentience. There’s no reason to think that such a prime mover would have any of those things.
If that’s your intention, and you think god doesn’t (or at least might not) have those things, that’s fine, but don’t be surprised when people misunderstand you.
Thanks for the link to that thread. I’ll have to spend more time with it this weekend. But I have a simple question for you. Do you hold it as a possibility, remote as it might be, that there is a God and he created everything?
I think you’re confused here. The only mention I made of it was to explain that which argument I was NOT making. See the first post on Page 2.
Well, you’re really getting into a different question that would be better fro its own thread. And that is the nature of God. The degree to which he is perfect, omniscient, etc. I will say that the Prime Mover must have will. Not will necessarily to create the earth and us, but will to make something happen, of which all we know is the, or a, result.