---In [email protected], <jr_esq@...> wrote : Curtis,
My responses are shown in red below: ---In [email protected], <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : ---In [email protected], <jr_esq@...> wrote : Barry, Have you ever thought that atheism is also a belief-- and an unreasonable one at that? M: Couldn't help overhearing... Atheism is not a belief because it is not a positive assertion that there is no God. It is the assertion that there is no compelling evidence to support the belief. We don't need to have a belief that there are no unicorns. Maybe there are. We just don't have any evidence to support our belief in one. (Probably people made the story up, they tend to enjoy that being such creative creatures.) Atheism is defined as a belief in "no god", according to Webster's College Dictionary. By the suffix of the word "ism", the word is self-defined as a belief, according to the rules of the English language. It appears that the self-proclaimed atheists should understand what the meaning of the word "Atheism" means before saying that they are not "believers". M: You had to overlook the first definition to make your point" a disbelief in the existence of deity Which is as I said, not the same as having a belief. It is the absence of the belief in God. Not believing in something is not a positive belief. Most atheists would say they don't know if there is a God, only that there is no evidence for one if they are being careful with their words. I do not have a belief in God. There is no belief that takes its place. I think it is unlikely that there is a God or that if here was one that man could know about him. But that is not a firm belief in no God, it is the lack of a belief in God. Do you see the difference? JR: As such, you have the responsibility to prove your case. You cannot rely on the theists to prove their case, while you take the contrary view. M: This is absurd you can't prove a negative. It IS up to the people proposing the belief to make their case and then for people to decide if it had merit. The only case I need to make is the problem with the "evidence" presented which I did with the non proof below. Jr: The Kalam Cosmological Argument should dispel any of your doubts. M: It does not for two reasons that come to mind. Here is a formulation (feel free to substitute your own if this is not the right one in your eyes..) You have restated the KCA correctly as shown in the following link: Kalām cosmological argument - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81m_cosmological_argument Kalām cosmological argument - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81m_cosmological_argument The term Kalām cosmological argument (sometimes capitalized Kalām Cosmological Argument, or abbreviated KCA) is used to refer to a modern defense or re-formulation of the historical cosmological argument for the existence of God by William Lane Craig, first propos... View on en.wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81m_cosmological_argument Preview by Yahoo Everything that begins to exist has a cause; Unwarranted assumption. We don't know if this is true at the scales of time and space involved in creation. It is a typical imposition of our limited view of the sensory world to scales that are completely unplugged from our ability to intuit about it. It is unnecessary and merely contrived as if to say : There must be a God so there must be a God. Logic is not a proof. It can preserve truth through proper syllogistic form, but it is only as good as the assumptions which must be proven another way. This is not a good start. It appears that you don't agree with the premise in 1 above. As such, prove to us that the premise in NOT true. Please, give us your argument and evidence that everything that begins to exist DOESN'T have a cause. Give us a specific instance in Nature that shows that statement 1 is incorrect. M: You are applying the rules of one level of creation to a level where this in inappropriate. We don't know if the present matter in the universe got sucked through a black hole of an alternate universe in an endless recycling. I only have to imagine it otherwise to contradict this as a first principle. It has been asserted with zero proof. The burden of proof has not shifted to me just because an assumption has been made. That is ridiculous. Leprechauns created the universe. Prove me wrong or accept it as true. See the point? 2. The universe began to exist M: There are a lot a problems with this assumptions since it imposes sequential time assumptions on an event which by nature is beyond time and space. This is the realm of "you probably don't really understand it" physics. (Me either, the subject requires math waaaaay beyond my pay grade.) Can you prove that the universe did not begin to exist? Is it logical to assume that there are a lot of problems with statement 2 when you don't even have an example to disprove it? If you don't have any evidence, there's a very good chance your assumption is INCORRECT. M: You are kind of winging it here, aren't you? Again, I don't have to disprove anything. I am just pointing out that it is an unsupported assumption which is pretty far fetched as an irrefutable principle given where we are at in human knowledge at this level of creation. We don't know too much yet about this, so it is completely premature to assert something as an irrefutable principle in a syllogism . Philosophically this syllogism is saying nothing more than "I believe the universe has a cause" (and by implication know what that cause is and how it operates.) The form of a syllogism for unsupported assumptions is sophistic bafflegaff, trying to make an unsupported assumption seem to be more than that. therefore: 3The universe has a cause. Yeah, surprise surprise. This is no proof, it is an an assumption disguised as something logical as if that makes it less assumptive-y. It doesn't. By rules of logic, if statements 1 and 2 are true, then statement 3 must be true. If you don't agree, then you're not being logical. There's a very good chance that you're thinking is not thorough and is biased. M: I was challenging the truth of the premises, not the formal conclusion. Logic only only preserves truth, it does not generate it. If you have missed my focus on the premises' truth then chances are you're thinking is not even cursory, let alone thorough. But your bias is irrelevant to the problems with the assertions. The case is not made by challenging me to prove it wrong. I don't have to in order to expose the unproven assumptions from the onset. I like the last image joke best. ---In [email protected], <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
