---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote :
'Everything that exists has no cause' is not the equivalent of
'everything that begins to exist has no cause'. No beginning is stated
or implied. I said nothing about 'begins'. I was talking about
existence without time. The eternity of space and things but no time.
Like a still photograph, frozen being. Have you ever heard the Zen
koan 'show me your original face before your parents were born'? As
far as my experience is concerned, I have always existed. The body
that gives me eyes seems to have had prior causes. The raw components
of the body were fashioned in the hearts of collapsing starts billions
of years ago. The protons in my body, if science is correct, are 13.5
billion years old. I certainly feel that old sometimes. So every
aspect of my sense of 'self' is old or timeless, older than my parents
as you appear to imaging them.
Presumably you have heard various statements on FFL about pure being,
transcendental consciousness, and eternity, you know, beyond life and
death. Even though such statements are a bit shy of the truth, they
are representative of certain kinds of experiences people have when
they practice meditation many times a day for long periods of time.
One has experiences that subjectively are timeless.
The idea of eternity comes from these kinds of experiences. But if the
mind is not really clear about these sorts of experiences it
interprets eternity as endless time. If we take a scientific
perspective, there is no timelessness in observing the world, though
we think we know that if you travel at the speed of light, there would
be timelessness. However only photons travel at the speed of light in
a vacuum, other particles and hence all other matter cannot be
accelerated to the velocity of light because it would take an infinite
amount of energy.
You still have not really made any significant mention of the Kalam
argument. I think Curtis is right that you do not grasp these things
very well. Among statements about the world and life I have my
favourites, but I do not regard them as true. I particularly do not
regard the Kalam argument as true.
Curtis already demolished your position and you have not responded to
him. You are out of your league with Curtis, as I think I would be.
Here is part of an argument by Dan Barker about the Kalam, what do you
think?
Of course, if you live "outside of time," whatever that means,
then you don't need a beginning in time. A transcendent being,
living Theists regularly talk about a place "beyond" the
universe, a transcendent realm where God exists "outside of time."
". . . the universe has a cause. This conclusion ought to
stagger us, to fill us with awe, for it means that the
universe was brought into existence by something which is
greater than and beyond it."
Of course, if you live "outside of time," whatever that means,
then you don't need a beginning in time. A transcendent being,
living "beyond" nature, is conveniently exempt from the
limitations of natural law, and all complaints that God
himself must have had a cause or a designer (using the same
natural reasoning that tries to call for his existence) can be
dismissed by theists who insist that God is outside the loop,
unaffected by natural causality, beyond time.
Yet theists continue to describe this "timeless" being in
temporal terms. Phrases such as "God decided to create the
universe" are taken by us mere mortals to be analogous to such
natural phrases as "Annie Laurie decided to bake a pie." If
such phrases are not equal or analogous to normal human
language, and if they are not redefined coherently, then they
are useless. We may as well say "God blopwaddled to
scrumpwitch the universe."
The word "create" is a transitive verb. We have no experience
of transitive verbs operating outside of time (how could we?),
so when we hear such a word, we must picture it the only way
we can: a subject acts on an object. Considering the point at
which an action is committed, there must be an antecedent
state "during" which the action is not committed, and this
would be true either in or out of time.
To say that "God created time" is not comprehensible to us.
But if he did it anyway, in spite of our lack of imagination,
then it couldn't have happened "after" the decision to commit
it, because there was no "before." However, we might still
imagine the act of creation as "following" the decision to
create. Or, to avoid temporal terms, the creating succeeds the
deciding in the logical order. (In logic we say that a
conclusion "follows," though we do not mean this happens in
space or time. Craig writes that "the origin of the universe
is causally prior to the Big Bang, though not temporally prior
to the Big Bang."
Either in or out of time, the decision of a personal agency to
commit an action happens antecedent to the action itself. Even
if the deciding and the acting happened simultaneously, it
would still not be true that the acting was antecedent to the
deciding. Imagine God saying, "Oh, look! I just created a
universe. Now I'd better decide to do it."
This means that there must exist a series of antecedent causal
events in the mind of a time-transcendent creator, if such a
being exists. Since the Kalam argument claims that "an actual
infinity cannot exist in reality," it shoots itself in the
foot: although Kalam deals with temporal succession, the same
logic applies to non-temporal antecedent events, if such
things are a part of reality. If the series were infinite,
then God never could have traversed the totality of his own
antecedent mental causes to arrive at his decision to say "Let
there be light." Therefore, sticking with Kalam, there must
have been a "first antecedent" in the mind of an actual God,
which means that God "began" to exist.
I believe you are evading the very argument you brought us here;
you have assumed it is true, but you do not seem to be able to
elaborate on it, only repeat it in its simplest form, which only
states the universe has a cause, it does not say anything about
what that cause might be. It could be Fred the janitor who began
to exist the universe, and then he entered his own creation to
sweep the floors, you know, to keep it tidy because of us humans.
At any rate, what do you have to say about Barker's criticism of
the Kalam (and that is only part of his criticism)?
As for me, I still do not know what 'begins to exist' means in
this context. In terms of refashioning matter into a new form, I
think I probably have an idea, but that is not begining to exist
in an essential sense. I think of things existing or not, but not
beginning to exist. I tend to think of forms being fashioned from
other forms, so an auto-mobile for example, is simply a rehash of
auto-mobile parts, which are then a rehash of raw materials such
as aluminium and iron and plastic (which is a rehash of oil). So
your explanation could be illuminating. I have been waiting with
bated breath for your explanation, but I do not have an infinite
attention span, and so far I do not think you know what you are
talking about.
===========================
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote :
Xeno,
After a long introduction to your reasoning, you state that: "I
tend to prefer 'everything that exists has no cause'. Everything
is just there. That is my position."
IMO, you're statement is the same as saying "everything that
begins to exist has no cause". But, in either case, your
statement becomes problematic. Essentially, you're saying that you
came into existence in this world without the involvement of your
mother and father. That is contrary to the natural way human
beings are born. How is that possible?
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote :
I don't know what it means, explain it to me, as you seem to know
what it means. That NASA sent Curiosity to Mars is not logically
connected to your statement that 'it appears that humans know can
understand the meaning of "begins to exist". You may have
connected it in your mind, but not in the post.
In the link I provided, there are some criticisms of the Kalam
argument, but you have still not read them apparently.
For me some things exist. Other things do not. 'Begins to exist'
seems redundant. How does that work? What are the steps between
non-existence and existence? I have no clue. I suspect you do not
either, but I am willing to hear you out on this. You need to
explain your position.
My position is this:
There is an essential value of existence. All things that exist
have this essential value. We can say there are things that do not
exist but this is meaningless as the essential value of existence
is missing and therefore there are no such things. We cannot know
of them because they are not.
Curiosity exists and is on Mars. It exists because someone had a
thought, and then manipulated the extant universe to correspond to
the thought. Where did the thought come from? It appeared in
someone's brain, how did it arise? There was (we assume) prior
activity in the person's brain before the thought arose. Was it
just a refashioning of previous neural events, or a spontaneous
outlier from out of nowhere? Everything Curiosity is made of was
fashioned from previously existing matter, already part of the
currently extant universe. Basically it is a sophisticated
auto-mobile, but all its parts previously existed in another form
so can we really say it came into being, when its components
already had being?
The argument you seem to be proposing does not involve
refashioning, so that was not a good analogy. You need to explain
your argument to me. What specifically does 'begins to exist' mean
in your context?
What is the difference in saying 'everything that exists has a
cause' compared to 'everything that begins to exist has a cause'?
I tend to prefer 'everything that exists has no cause'. Everything
is just there. That is my position. I am not sure you have a
position, other than you want people to accept the Kalam argument.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote :
Xeno,
Are you saying that the human mind would not be able to fathom the
meaning of "begins to exist"? If that is so, how is it possible
for you to begin and end a project at work or at home?
But we know that NASA has been able to send the Curiosity rover to
Mars which is a very high technological feat. So, it appears
that humans know can understand the meaning of "begins to exist".
If not, NASA would not have been able to send the rover to Mars.
I believe you're avoiding the question by claiming that you don't
know what statement 1 of the KCA means. In other words, you're
being disingenuous. Or, that you're pulling a Curtis on us.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote :
x exists
x does not exist
I do not know what the phrase 'begins to exist' means, especially
in regard to the universe as a whole. If x were an auto-mobile,
perhaps one could say that when it was partially assembled, it
began to exist, but all the components of that were manufactured
prior to that and merely gathered together with welds, bolts, and
glue. And those parts had precursors, ad infinitum (almost) to the
beginning of the universe, before which we have no knowledge, and
in fact we have only induction as to regard the early universe.
And induction is logically invalid.
The link I gave in the previous post did do some analysis why the
Kalam argument is flawed, apparently you did not read it. Here it
is again: Cosmological Kalamity
<http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html>
Cosmological Kalamity
<http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html>
Home » Library » Modern » Dan Barker » Cosmological Kalamity Dan
Barker "Daddy, if God made everything, who made God?" my daughter
Kristi asked me, when she was five years old.
View on infidels.org
<http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html>
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I do not know how the universe began.
I do not know what 'begins to exist' means in this context, can
you fill in some detail?
If this were science, all I would have to do is wait for your
demonstration of the truth of the argument, but as it seems no one
knows, I doubt this would be forthcoming. As Curtis pointed out,
proving a negative is impossible. It is a time waster. In science
one simply ignores those who do not show up with evidence for
their claims and thus science ('to know' is the meaning of the
word) only works with people who actively produce results.
For all I know the Kalam argument might be accidentally true, but
essentially I just find it unconvincing. If god is un-caused, then
god did not begin to exist, and if god did not begin to exist, he
cannot exist. The word everything would seem to include what is
called god, other wise, the first sentence includes a false
concept. We would have not 'everything that begins to exist has a
cause', and then we would have a number of possible things that
were un-caused. For example, Zeus, the king of the gods, a step
higher in divinity than the other gods, of which perhaps your god
is one of those lesser ones.
I can say on the basis of experience, that the universe was
re-created this morning when I woke up. It was recreated again
this morning and this evening when I came out of meditationafter a
timeless spell (I am not saying what sort of meditation was
happening or not). I am un-caused, and therefore I must not be
beginning to exist, and therefore I am not the universe, but
seeing the universe seemed to emerge from what I am, I must be a
creator of some sort. So if this happens with me, what am I? I
must be more than a human form and mind, being able to contain all
this.
Since in my own estimation, I seem to have created the universe,
where does that leave your argument? If the universe has a cause,
how do you determine what that cause is or is not? Simply stating
that the universe has a cause does not reveal the nature of the
cause. It could be a quantum fluctuation in a multi-verse
continuum. With multi-verses, maybe some have gods, and some do
not. Maybe some are created by farts in a hyper-cosmic digestive
system.
You have also not mentioned the argument that the universe has no
cause. Suppose we say, that in spite of all appearances, the
universe has no cause at all. It was a spontaneous event that had
no priors; that would mean that all the stuff in the universe
ultimately had no cause either, the stuff within would have prior
events but ultimately could not be traced back to a primal cause.
Accidental existence. Perhaps we are all part of an unwanted
pregnancy.
Curtis is actually much better at this kind of reasoning than I
am. I think he just wanted you to provide a positive example of
the stipulation you made, something he could work with. A
philosopher needs an argument, and needs to be able to state the
other person's position accurately so they can look for a weakness
in definition of terms and logic. You need to provide that.
Otherwise you are not worth his time. He might as well waste his
time with a Bible-thumping preacher from Hicksville. His time
would be better spent teaching kids critical thinking. I can tell
you when I was young in school, this is a skill that was not
taught. America is a nation of idiots and climbing out of that pit
of un-reason is no easy task. To be fair, had I ever remained in
Greece, I doubt I would have fared better, though there are more
opportunities for causes way back at the beginning of our place in
the scheme of things:
Greek gods prepare for comeback
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/05/greece>
image <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/05/greece>
Greek gods prepare for comeback
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/05/greece>
It has taken almost 2,000 years, but those who worship the 12 gods
of ancient Greece have finally triumphed. An Athens court has
ordered that the adulation of...
View on www.theguardian.com
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/05/greece>
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---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote :
Xeno,
I have asked Curtis about his support or evidence for disagreeing
with the statements in the Kalam Cosmological Argument. But he
just gave me a lot of song and dance about his opinions without
providing the evidence for his arguments. Can you give us a solid
argument with evidence and support why the statements in the KCA
have a flaw?
Let's take the KCA which states:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause;
2. The universe began to exist;
/Therefore/:
3. The universe has a cause.
Do you agree with statement 1 or not? If not, please give us your
reasons for disagreeing.
