Originally posted by jaywillCan you justify your assertion that "man is too important to be an accident" without reference to God?
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Ah, I love the smell of narcissism in the morning. That's all it boils down to. You love yourself too much to accept that the universe could have been otherwise. Pathetic.
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Sure, I love myself. I am worst than you could ever imagine.
I'm really a self loving and ...[text shortened]... e brain washed, even MORE self loving, and have put your trust in Darwin's gospel of dirt.[/b]
Originally posted by jaywillThe one that says God is not part of the subset of 'everything?'
Let's get back on the subject of First Cause arguments.
1.) Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2.) The Universe had a beginning.
3.) Therefore the universe had a cause.
Which premise do you find fault with?
The one that doesn't address the idea that the collapse of a previous
universe didn't cause the rise of this one, ad infinitum?
Nemesio
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A self confessed agnostic and astronomer recently said this:
"Astronomers now find they gave painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover ... That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact."
An interview with Robert Jastrow, a past serving director of the Mount Wilson Observatory - quoted in "The Expanding Universe" by Arthur Eddington, MacMillion, 1933, page 178
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Originally posted by jaywillThen he's not an agnostic. He believes that supernatural forces are at
A self confessed agnostic and astronomer recently said this:
"Astronomers now find they gave painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they hav - quoted in [b]"The Expanding Universe" by Arthur Eddington, MacMillion, 1933, page 178[/b]
work.
A source from 1933 is recent?
Nemesio
Originally posted by jaywillMan, we didn't even know about continental drift, the structure or function of DNA, and most certainly hadn't come up with the Big Bang theory in 1933.
A self confessed agnostic and astronomer recently said this:
[b]"Astronomers now find they gave painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they hav ...[text shortened]... - quoted in [b]"The Expanding Universe" by Arthur Eddington, MacMillion, 1933, page 178[/b]
So, what's your point again?
Originally posted by jaywill1.
Let's get back on the subject of First Cause arguments.
1.) Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2.) The Universe had a beginning.
3.) Therefore the universe had a cause.
Which premise do you find fault with?
It is a causal argument. It only applied to things which exist within time, which is to say within the universe. The universe itself does not apply.
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Originally posted by jaywillFirst, I think your formulation implicitly begs the question, in that it implicitly treats the universe as an effect in need of a cause (premise 2). This goes back to your wording in premise 1, where you state “Everything that has a beginning has a cause.”
Let's get back on the subject of First Cause arguments.
1.) Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2.) The Universe had a beginning.
3.) Therefore the universe had a cause.
Which premise do you find fault with?
But the universe is not “something” and therefore not a something in need of a cause. The universe is not a thing like a jar containing all the bugs within it, such that once you have explained all the causal connections relating to the bugs you still need a causal explanation for the jar. There is no jar.
The universe is simply the designation of the collectivity; and, again, as Dr. S. pointed out, is not a part of itself. Twhitehead’s analogy of the set of all possible integers is on point: you can add any number of the integers, but you cannot apply the operation of addition to the set of all positive integers as a whole.
Simply—there is not “everything that makes up the universe” plus “the universe-itself.” (This may be akin to Wittgenstein’s point about always seeking a substance for every substantive we use, and thus becoming bewitched by our language.)
It is an error to speak in such a way of the “U-itself” as an entity: necessary or contingent. U is fully explained if one explains all the effects by all their (contingent) causes. (We may be actually barred from having such a complete knowledge of the “universal content;” there is no logical bar.)
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Here is another analogy:
Suppose I see a group of 5 Eskimos sitting in the park in Nashville, Tennessee. I want to have an explanation for how they came to be here. Investigation yields the following:
E1: Moved south to escape the extreme cold of the polar climate, which she no longer enjoyed.
E2: Is E1’s husband, loves her, and didn’t want to stay behind without her.
E3: Is the infant child of E1 and E2; had no choice.
E4: Saw an advertisement on satellite TV for a job as a computer programmer in Nashville, was unemployed, and decided to take the chance.
E5: Is a private detective hired by E4’s former spouse to follow E4.
Let’s assume that the following explanations are sufficient to explain the behavior of each of the Eskimos (or, that if they are not sufficient, there is no logical bar on getting enough further information to meet the test of sufficiency—theoretically, we could trace every item in the causal complex). Now you ask: “Yes, but what explains why the group of Eskimos came to Nashville?”
But—once we have explained the behavior of all the individuals (and their relationships with each other), there is nothing left to explain.
— This analogy adapted from the version presented by Paul Edwards in Critiques of God.
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Further, even if one treats U as some sort of something-itself, it may be possible that U is not contingent—
Arguing from Hume (and Simon Blackburn in Think): If there is no bar on proposing an extra-U necessary being, there is no bar on proposing that U has the properties, that are transcendent to our intellectual access, that make up such a necessary “being”—as a complex of U.
To quote from Blackburn:
“For it must be ‘unknown, inconceivable qualities’ that make anything a ‘necessary existent.’ And for all we know, such unknown inconceivable qualities may attach to the ordinary physical universe, rather than to any immaterial thing or person or deity lying behind it.”
That is whatever “something” there might be that requires no causal explanation outside itself could just as well be U as a whole.
This really goes to what may be an unwarranted “leap” from premise 2 to your conclusion..
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In sum:
(1) I find fault with the wording of your first two premises, which beg the question by implicitly defining the universe as a thing in need of a cause, in order to conclude that it is, indeed, a thing in need of a cause.
(2) That aside, I find your “leap” from premise 2 to your conclusion possibly unwarranted.
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Originally posted by vistesdvistesd,
First, I think your formulation implicitly begs the question, in that it implicitly treats the universe as an effect in need of a cause (premise 2). This goes back to your wording in premise 1, where you state “Everything that has a beginning has a cause.”
But the universe is not “something” and therefore not a something in need of a cause. The ...[text shortened]... 2) That aside, I find your “leap” from premise 2 to your conclusion possibly unwarranted.
I'll get back to you concerning the first three paragraphs. I have heard that argument before though. That is that the universe is not a thing.
Originally posted by scottishinnz+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Man, we didn't even know about continental drift, the structure or function of DNA, and most certainly hadn't come up with the Big Bang theory in 1933.
So, what's your point again?
Man, we didn't even know about continental drift, the structure or function of DNA, and most certainly hadn't come up with the Big Bang theory in 1933.
So, what's your point again?
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Does the fact that there are many things YET to be discovered that we have know present day knowledge of make "continental drift" and "DNA function" also necessarily poor science?
The astronomer's point was that he believed (again as an agnostic) that his branch of science had proven the existence of:
1.) A beginning to the universe
2.) Supernatural forces at work.
I guess my only point is that it is interesting to notice that an agnostic scientist who serves with NASA and sat in Dr. Hubble's chair at Mount Wilson Observatory would make such an observation.
I don't think the latter discoveries of DNA function and continental drift have that much bearing on the matter. The tectonic plates and the DNA are all part of the universe and came out of star material anyway.
So we know a little more about the stuff that stars spew out. It has little bearing on the subject of the universe's beginning and expansion.
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Originally posted by Nemesio++++++++++++++++++++++++
Then he's not an agnostic. He believes that supernatural forces are at
work.
A source from 1933 is recent?
Nemesio
Then he's not an agnostic. He believes that supernatural forces are at work.
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Baloney.
By his own admittion he is an agnostic. And that means that he doesn't KNOW if there is a God or not.
"When an astronomer writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters."
Jastrow - God and the Astronomers
Incidently, that is a book I did read. I found it very good and would recommend it to any reasonably open minded person agnostic, atheist, or theist.
I don't think that being an agnostic precludes that one knows that there are no supernatural forces.
And concerning your other post that you objected to the premise that God was not a part of the universe? Strictly speaking that was not one of the three premises. That is some latter deduction outside of the three premises.
1.) Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2.) The universe had a beginning.
3.) Therefore the universe had a cause.
Other objections raised I will attempt to deal with latter.