:up:

As presuppositions go, I don't see overwhelming evidence that the world we think we know is rational or ordered. Humans impose reason and order because we are pattern seeking machines. One could just as well argue that the universe specialises in black holes and chaos and kills most of the life it spawns, often with horrendous suffering. Life on earth is one of predation - for many creatures to eat, suffering and death are required. Why would a universe be designed to produce such chaos and suffering and a natural world which wipes out incalculable numbers of lifeforms with earthquakes, fires and floods? Why would a universe of balance have within it so many meaningless accidental deaths in nature, along with endless horrendous diseases and concomitant wretchedness?

Sure, "rationality" as a whole is an amorphous term. I was thinking more specifically in terms of "is it likely for a universe evolve from state to state, such that past states dictate future ones?" That is, that the Principle of Sufficient Reason holds. That PSR is a far assumption for our world has no doubt be challenged, but I think those challenges still are a small minority viewpoint. And that makes sense to me, after all, we don't see pigs materialize out of thin air, second moons appear in the night sky, chop a carrot and have one half turn to dust, etc. There are law-like ways to describe the behaviors of the universe at both the macro and microscales. That's the sort of rationality I'm getting at, one which I believe tracks fairly closely with the Stoic and Patristic conceptions of Logos Spermatikos.

We can imagine consciousness without PSR. We can think up toy universes similar enough to ours where PSR might not hold but first person experiences can still exist. However, there is a strong argument to be made that PSR, or at least a world that is "mostly law-like," is essential for freedom. I think that connection to arguments for God could be explored to some benefit. Although, it's probably more common to think that PSR somehow precludes freedom, so maybe this wouldn't be a very successful argument. I absolutely disagree with that interpretation, but it's certainly a common take.


A definition in those terms assumes a time dimension of course, but we could redefine it more abstractly in terms of dimensions only.

Death, suffering, chaos, etc. all only make sense in terms of living things so those issues seem anterior to life existing, more in the bucket of "the problem of evil."

Plantinga has a brilliant mind, but his brilliance is very limited by his nescience with respect to 'the' scientific picture and naturalistic perspectives. Unfortunately Plantinga is only able to present straw men to attack with the EAAN. Admittedly the EAAN can be highly effective as an apologetic that maintains others in a state of nescience similar to that of Plantinga.

BTW, 100% agree on this. He's one of the greatest logic choppers of a generation but it seems like he's thrown that talent into areas where it is just less relevant to what people care about. To be sure, there is some interesting stuff in the philosophy of religion, but it seems very rare for it to actually change people's opinions or even influence theology much. This, to me, is one of the weirder things about ontological arguments. There is a fair share of sophisticated analysis on Anselm and Godel's "proofs of God," that concludes both that they are valid deductions and completely unconvincing.

I do wonder though if people who come to believe that realityis mathematical, would tend to put more stock in such ontological arguments? It seems like they should, because they don't see mathematics as merely a practical tool, but for some reason I doubt it moves the needle much.

I'll have to think about that more. It seems to me that the "end" does not exist until it is actualized. Thus, God's desire is posterior to the existence of the end. Or, if God is eternal, God desires the end simultaneous with all times, while the end only occurs within created time. Sort of like how, if I build a house, my idea of a house and my desire to have a house exists before I have built the house. To be sure, the "idea" of my end exists before I start building it, but I don't know if it works to say the unactualized end must exist before an agent can desire it (at least not for God, I suppose that is true in Platonism for people).

Much like the universe is not, traditionally in the West, of itself an aspect of God but instead is God's creation

This is definitely true of modern folk religion, which has tried to separate the realms of science and religion, but I don't think it's traditionally true. For example, in Neoplatonism the One still emanates nature (barring versions with a Demiurge, e.g., Gnosticism). In Christianity, God is often seen as continually causing the world to come into being. In the Confessions, Saint Augustine has God "within everything but contained in nothing," like "water in a sponge," Origen likewise has God involved in sustaining being. Eckhart has a conception of God that get likened to Pantheism, although I don't think this is entirely accurate, it's more Pantheism + more traditional Trinitarian conceptions. You have Spinoza in the Western Tradition, Boheme and Hegel's self-generating God/Absolute, Berkley, where God is responsible for all our sensations. Nature itself was suffused with God, before becoming "disenchanted," as Adorno puts it.

Not super relevant to the topic at hand, but I think it would be interesting to unpack why this strong tradition of seeing God involved in sustaining all things, filling all things, came to decline in favor of the "divine Watchmaker," or a God who mostly doesn't act in the world and only sometimes intervenes, and who always does so supernaturally.

That said, I think arguments like Plantinga's, if successful, do more than just show us our epistemic limits. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think Plantinga's EAAN does succeed in showing people their epistemic limits except in cases where the person recognizes that the EAAN fails.

If your theory of the world is self-defeating, if there is a contradiction in your justification for having true beliefs, it's worth looking at how you can avoid this problem. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it depends on what is meant by "how you can avoid this problem".

The EAAN suggests that given evolution and naturalism we have good reason to doubt the reliability of our cognitive faculties. (The argument utterly overlooks the fact that we are members of a social species, and therefore there is a huge adaptive benefit to homo sapiens being able to communicate with some accuracy. So the argument fails to make a very good case, but still...)

It seems to me there are two major categories of responses to this:

1. Go with epistemic grandiosity, and deny that one's cognitive faculties have questionable reliability, and reject evolution and/or naturalism.

2. Go with epistemic humility and accept that one's cognitive faculties have questionable reliability, and keep on following where the evidence leads to the best of your abilities.

Now I'm not saying those categories are exhaustive. Certainly they are rather exaggerated charicatures to make a point. However, with those categories in mind I do want to ask, what is the problem to be avoided here?

Death, suffering, chaos, etc. all only make sense in terms of living things so those issues seem anterior to life existing, more in the bucket of "the problem of evil." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure this is correct - for evil to exist, this seems to require free choice. How can something be evil if it is the necessary requirement for existence, built into it by the creator/evolution? The notion of predation, so much a part of the natural world of animals, must then imply that the natural world is evil. Do you subscribe to this? Manichaeism holds to this view. Earthquakes, fire and floods are built into how nature functions, how can they be evil? Are black holes evil?

When some people attempt to quarantine suffering and pain caused by natural processes as being somehow separate from a 'good' or 'balanced' creation, it seems manipulative or selective.

That PSR is a far assumption for our world has no doubt be challenged, but I think those challenges still are a small minority viewpoint. And that makes sense to me, after all, we don't see pigs materialize out of thin air, second moons appear in the night sky, chop a carrot and have one half turn to dust, etc. There are law-like ways to describe the behaviors of the universe at both the macro and microscales. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure this works for me. You talk about 'law-like'. But even in using the term 'laws' this implies a lawgiver - there's a prejudice built into the language. Would it not be fairer to argue that there are various regularities we have observed in our world (let's ignore QM). Do these say anything about a creator or about purpose? Not really. All they say is we have observed regularity. Maybe worth noting that Kant and others hold that our notion of space/time is not really 'out there' in the universe but inside us as part of our cognitive apparatus. Could not many of our accounts of the world be more about us than the world itself? Future accounts/discoveries may see some of those regularities we see be replaced in time. We just don't really know.

I'll have to think about that more. It seems to me that the "end" does not exist until it is actualized. Thus, God's desire is posterior to the existence of the end. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The end never occurs, exists, as an actualized end until the moment its actualized, if this moment ever manifests, true. But the end one pursues will occur as that for the sake of which one does what one does; i.e., it will occur as a telos. As an actively held telos, it will then limit or bind what one generates to its own self - for all which one brings about will be so brought about for the purpose of transforming one's telos into an actualized endstate (at which juncture the telos vanishes). This, at the very least, is my take on the more basic premises of teleology.

For a common example, Alice intends to go to the store. Her having gone to the store doesn't yet exist - and might never exist if, for example, Alice becomes barred from so doing due to an unexpected friend's call that she deems to be more important to prioritize. Here, suppose nothing bars her from so going to the store. "Going to the store" is her intent, her telos - which will occur (non-physically) as that which guides all her ensuing activities aiming to fulfill this telos (i.e., to make it an actualized endstate). This very telos, then, in this sense alone, serves as a determinant of her actions. In the complete absence of all teloi - both conscious and unconscious - Alice's behaviors could then all be perfectly random.

As a more abstract example, many conceive of all life seeking optimal self-presertavion. Here tentatively granting this, optimal self-preservation will then be the at least unconscious telos of all life: one can never perfectly fulfill this telos while living. It does not exist as might some actual object exists; nor does it exist as a completely fulfilled endstate. It, here, nevertheless is deemed to be the intent (telos) that guides, motivates, teleologically determines all behaviors enacted by lifeforms. One that is not of lifeforms willful creation.

In these two examples, while we can select certain teloi to be thereafter guided by, we do not select - much less create - inherent teloi such as that of pursuing optimal self-preservation. And to select any one telos (e.g. intent) from two or more alternative possibilities, we in this very activity will need to be guided by teloi (else our behavior is random). Due to this - if I've explained things well enough - we ourselves cannot choose, much less create, all the teloi which determine our behaviors (both cognitive and physical).

Then, as an example applicable to the notion of an omnipotent deity: Does the omnipotent deity abide by that which is good or, else, is this deity the creator of the very ideal of the good? If the former, then the good here is a telos which guides, motivates, teleologically determines this omnipotent deity toward a potential endstate has not yet realized in full and which the deity did not create.

Hence, here, either the good as telos is an existentially fixed aspect of reality (which simply "just is") that either directly or indirectly governs the activities of everything, very much including those of this omnipotent deity - in which case this deity cannot be all powerful, for he is limited or bounded by the good which is not of his creation - or, else, this omnipotent deity is the very creator of the good.

Its the latter interpretation that I take logical issue with: to create entails intentional creation which, in turn, entails intents/teloi. One could for example ask: for the sake of what (i.e., with what telos) did this omnipotent deity create the good? If he deemed this creation good, then he didn't create the good. And one can argue this line of thought more abstractly: There is an infinite quantity of creations - always with some telos that determines the creations of this omnipotent deity (for otherwise the creations would be random) which this omnipotent deity neither created not chose but is instead guided by and, hence, limited and bound by.

OK, now that I've written this - tough I'll post it any way - I realize that it might be hard to understand or maybe poorly expressed. In which case, at this point, maybe it might be better to leave things where they're at? Inconclusive though things might be.

Not super relevant to the topic at hand, but I think it would be interesting to unpack why this strong tradition of seeing God involved in sustaining all things, filling all things, came to decline in favor of the "divine Watchmaker," or a God who mostly doesn't act in the world and only sometimes intervenes, and who always does so supernaturally. — Count Timothy von Icarus

FWIW, these are the views I so far hold: in the history of mankind, there has repeatedly emerged the notion of a certain uncreated given that "just is" on which everything we know of is dependent. For materialists, this given is matter. For those who are often labeled spiritual, this given has either been an individuated psyche with superlative abilities in all respects (i.e., a deity, replete with the deity's requisite abilities to perceive things and to hold agency as a psyche) or, historically preceding this concept, a certain something that by its very properties cannot be an individuated psyche. Both these notions can be addressed by the term "God". Plato's "The Good", which later morphed into the neoplatonic "The One", serves as one example of God as non-deity. So too does the Judaic notion of G-d which takes the form of the Ein Sof. So too the Eastern notion of the Brahman.

In Western culture, polytheism (including henotheism) converged with philosophical notions of the absolute (e.g., Neoplatonic notions of "The One") to create the notion of something that holds the properties of the philosophical notion of the absolute while at the same time being a singular deity of superlative powers - a singular absolute deity which can hear your thoughts/prayers and act as he (intentionally) wishes in turn.

There's quite a lot more, obviously, both in terms of this very issue and in terms of the wide array of spiritual and theistic belief structures that occurred in the history of the West. I'll here add that the non-deity understanding of God can at the very least be amiable to certain interpretations of pantheism and panentheism - and, therefore, to nature and naturalism (e.g., as aspects of the Stoic-like logos which this absolute in one way or another entails) - whereas the God-as-deity understanding requires that the deity stands in contrast to the nature which he creates and/or created. And, as per your example of the Gnostics, one can hold onto this uncreated, existential aboslute while also upholding the occurrence of deities (in this case, that of the Demurge as a prime example; also of Sophia as that deity which leads toward this very absolute that dwells beyond the Demurge and his creations).

I very much doubt we'll be able to arrive at any definitive conclusion on the matter, but this is a basic outline of my own best current appraisals.

Pretty much what you pointed out, avoiding "epistemic grandiosity." I think it's an argument for pragmatism, circular epistemology, and fallibilism. Demands for absolute certainty and for an absolute foundation go too far.

And, as Hoffman develops his very similar argument, I think it also cautions looking closely at how our innate faculties might be acting as theoretical blinders. It's too much to get into in detail, but I think mechanical philosophy in particular seems like it is something that might be born out of how evolution shaped the human sensory system.

Because our senses are vulnerable to illusions, we use one sense to "cross check" the veracity of another. E.g., when we see a flower we think might be fake, we touch it and smell it to help us decide. Mechanism and corpuscularism draw us in by giving us a "fundamental" model of reality that nicely coincides with an "image" of reality as bouncing balls we can simulate for ourselves with most of our senses (touch, vestibular, sight, hearing).

It's worth noting here that we appear to use the same systems for imagining a phenomenon that we use for perceiving that same type of phenomenon. Gallielo though everything was particles in motion, but dog-Gallielo might have argued for "fundamental scents."

I'm not sure this is correct - for evil to exist, this seems to require free choice. How can something be evil if it is the necessary requirement for existence, built into it by the creator/evolution? The notion of predation, so much a part of the natural world of animals, must then imply that the natural world is evil. Do you subscribe to this? Manichaeism holds to this view. Earthquakes, fire and floods are built into how nature functions, how can they be evil? Are black holes evil?

How can death and suffering exist without life? Something has to be alive in order for it to die, right? That's all I was getting at.

I'm not sure this works for me. You talk about 'law-like'. But even in using the term 'laws' this implies a lawgiver - there's a prejudice built into the language

Is there? When people talk about "the laws of physics," or "natural laws," I don't think they're generally presupposing any sort of "lawgiver." I don't see anything inconsistent with being an atheist and believing in "laws of physics." Indeed, many prominent atheists claim these are the only things they believe exist.

Whether these laws are intrinsic, just a description of the way physical entities interact because of what they are, or extrinsic, e.g. the Newtonian view where laws are outside of physical entities and govern them, doesn't really make a difference. The claim is simply that there is invariance in fundemental aspects of nature. E.g. water doesn't dissolve skin one day out of every 1,000, we don't see solid objects passing though each other — people walking through walls — conservation of energy appears to hold in our experiments, etc.

Do you think that's a controversial claim? To be sure, it's open to the critiques of radical skepticism, and the critique that the sciences regularly refine their descriptions of nature, but I feel like the claim that "Newton's law of gravity is well supported empircally and describes a uniformity in the world," is fairly well justified, even if we accept that it doesn't describe the phenomenon perfectly.

IDK, if people don't believe in the law of universal gravity, don't think Maxwell's equations describe the behavior of something real in the world, I will grant that my argument won't have any real appeal for them.

Could not many of our accounts of the world be more about us than the world itself?

Sure, absolutely. I'm willing to say that is almost certainly the case. But if we can't say we are justified in claiming that the fundamental findings in the sciences actually correspond to something about the way the world actually is, then how is knowledge even possible? If we observe gravity working the same way throughout our lifetime, and yet we still think this might be some sort of unreal order imposed upon the world, what could possibly justify any knowledge claims about external reality?

Why even posit a noumenal world in this case? If you take Kant that far, I'd argue you're better off going where Fichte and Hegel realized that thought led, to some form of idealism.

Do these say anything about a creator or about purpose?

Not obviously. But I'll refer you to the Fine-Tuning Problem and this post. .

Fine Tuning is considered a problem because it appears that life should only be possible by a fantastical set of "just so coincidences." The multiverse hypothesis from cosmic inflation proports to solve this problem by showing that, if some very large set of universes is created, then it is actually not surprising that we exist. Most universes can't support life, but a few can. Clearly, observers like us will only be in that smaller set of universes where they can exist.

My point is that this sort of argument runs into the problem of then having to explain why the multiverse only creates certain types of universes, that is, ones with "physical laws." Why is that constraint relevant? Because if you don't specify that only those sorts of universes get created, then the number of random universes is far larger than the number of ones with describable laws. However, the random universes should also be able to create observers like us by pure chance, and even be observably indiscernible from universes that do have laws for long periods of time, by pure coincidence. It's sort of like how a program that randomly outputs English words is much more likely to produce a coherent page of text than one that randomly outputs letters (randomly outputting pixels might be a better analogy though).

It's a problem akin to the Boltzmann Brain Problem, which is also an issue for multiverse theories, but more generalizable and perhaps less tractable. Unless there is some explanation of why only certain types of universes exist in the multiverse, the pivot to the multiverse doesn't seem to actually address the problem.

It also works from a purely phenomenological perspective as well, unlike Fine-Tuning, because there are many more ways we can imagine that our world progresses from state to state.

How can death and suffering exist without life? Something has to be alive in order for it to die, right? That's all I was getting at. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No - that's not the point I am making. I'd say you're overlooking the obvious. This is not just death and suffering exist; this is creation as a orgiastic instantiation of chaos, death and suffering. Specifically the mechanism of predation is predicated on extremes of cruelty and violence. This is built into the fabric of creation - survival is not possible without this. Now why would a 'good' god who could do anything specifically chose a creation built upon predation - suffering and chaos as a way of life?

Is there? When people talk about "the laws of physics," or "natural laws," I don't think they're generally presupposing any sort of "lawgiver." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Indeed they do - read anything by any Islamic or Christian apologists - its a key line 'a law implies a lawgiver'. William Lane Craig, a big name Christian philosopher maintains this in most of his work. This is one of the reasons why many atheists no longer refer to the 'Laws of logic' but prefer the 'logical axioms'. Our language influences our arguments. But I agree with you that this shouldn't be the case. Laws are metaphors.

My point is that this sort of argument runs into the problem of then having to explain why the multiverse only creates certain types of universes, that is, ones with "physical laws." — Count Timothy von Icarus

My problem is we don't know enough about the universe, the earth or even human perception and consciousness to make any totalizing claims about design. There isn't even agreement about idealism vs materialism. But what we do see, for what it's worth is that the universe seems mostly good at spawning black holes. :smile:

To be sure, there is some interesting stuff in the philosophy of religion, but it seems very rare for it to actually change people's opinions or even influence theology much. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agree. I don't think reason counts much in the god debates. You either buy the idea or you don't. I personally have no sensus divinitatis (to borrow from Calvin) so the notion of god is incoherent from my perspective, no matter how it is spun.

I don't think reason counts much in the god debates. You either buy the idea or you don't. — Tom Storm

Most of my relevant experience in recent years has been with discussions at William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Forum. So not a remotely unbiased sample. Still, there certainly are Christians who are very good reasoners and knowledgeable.

I think the intuitions individuals have, and the willingness those individuals have, to question intuitions, plays a big role. The premises of arguments for God depend greatly on intuitions, and intuitions (key to making the arguments seem like sound arguments) tend to get reinforced on Sunday mornings.

The premises of arguments for God depend greatly on intuitions, and intuitions (key to making the arguments seem like sound arguments) tend to get reinforced on Sunday mornings. — wonderer1

I hear you. I agree that some Christians are good at reason. And often they feel they need to be in a world that privileges reason and evidence over faith and feeling. When I think of defensive, perhaps even aggressive reasoning, I tend to think of apologists. Especially the presuppositionalists. Most atheists I know (certainly those who are not in America and don't have to face fundamentalists) are complacent and don't care much about the arguments for or against god. Their atheism is often a kind of lazy cultural scientism. You know the kind of thing - 'science makes sense, god's don't.'

What are the chances that our world should be a rational one? To put the question more concretely in the terms of physics: is it likely for a universe evolve from state to state, such that past states dictate future ones? Or, is the apparent rationality of our world evidence for a designer? — Count Timothy von Icarus

As far as I see, there are three options:
1. The universe is uncaused, therefore it is rational for no reason.
2. The universe is caused by a non-rational cause/reason.
3. The universe is caused by a rational cause/reason.

Suppose we reject 1 as we believe it to be unlikely that rationality can just exist uncaused. Then we go to 2 and we conclude that natural non-rational causes are also unlikely to produce a rational universe. That leaves us with 3. If the rational cause/reason of the universe is itself caused, then we need to recurse the argument, until we arrive at an uncaused rational cause/reason. But we have already concluded that it is unlikely that rationality can just exist uncaused. If we retract that conclusion, then we might as well accept 1.

When I think of defensive, perhaps even aggressive reasoning, I tend to think of apologists. Especially the presuppositionalists. — Tom Storm

I don't associate aggressiveness with apologetics so much as naive confidence, and I can relate to having such naive confidence myself. When I was 16 or 17 I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and not having much in the way of exposure to philosophy, I was impressed and felt ready to argue with any atheist I had the chance to. I have the impression that for many W.L. Craig fans it is similar. WLC is skilled at presenting arguments, and conveying the sense that any reasonable person must come to the same conclusions he does. However, 'normal' apologists, who have an appreciation for logical reasoning have a lot of potential for developing a broader perspective.

Presuppositionalism is the worst though. It's mind poison. It really messes people up, and sets them up for becoming more and more out of touch with reality.

Most atheists I know (certainly those who are not in America and don't have to face fundamentalists) are complacent and don't care much about the arguments for or against god. Their atheism is often a kind of lazy cultural scientism. You know the kind of thing - 'science makes sense, god's don't.' — Tom Storm

Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate that more such atheists don't understand the thinking of believers better because they tend to say cringeworthy things (from the perspective of people with an insider view of the thinking of believers) which feed into the stereotypes many Christians have with respect to atheists. However, I don't blame such atheists for not getting the thinking of Christians better, and not being prepared to have a potentially fruitful dialogue with Christians. The cultural gap is just too wide.

On a weirder note... I just found out Sunday that my mom is going to be passing on a letter from my fundamentalist home schooled 16 year old niece, which I'm pretty sure is going to be a 'come to Jesus' letter. So I get to look forward to deciding how or whether to respond without alienating my whole family of origin.

I don't associate aggressiveness with apologetics so much as naive confidence — wonderer1

I meant aggressive in the sense of super assertive and unassailably confident, not hostile.

The cultural gap is just too wide. — wonderer1

Probably right.

WLC is skilled at presenting arguments, and conveying the sense that any reasonable person must come to the same conclusions he does — wonderer1

He's definitely a very smart man but I find his style reminds me of a used car dealer, haranguing you to buy the product. For my taste he's too slick, too fast, too insinuating.

But I don't think the concept of god is a crossword puzzle to be solved over the weekend, with cups of tea and some hard thinking. If reason, time and space emanate from god's nature (and who is to know if this is the case?) then god presumably transcends such strictures and as such is likely unintelligible. — Tom Storm

:100: Nicely and succinctly said.

He's definitely a very smart man but I find his style reminds me of a used car dealer, haranguing you to buy the product. For my taste he's too slick, too fast, too insinuating. — Tom Storm

Oh, me too. But I've spent 15 years biting my tongue while participating on his forum. Old habits die hard.

Now why would a 'good' god who could do anything specifically chose a creation built upon predation - suffering and chaos as a way of life? — Tom Storm

Because he moves in mysterious ways or in other words "he just fuck'n does, right"!. :wink:

Agreed. I'd just add that, if we go back to 1, we are still left with the problem of why an uncaused thing happened once, but hasn't happened since. If random, uncaused events happen, shouldn't they happen all the time? You can't really argue that this isn't a problem because uncaused events are "unlikely," since how could they have any sort of factor determining their likelihood while still remaining uncaused?

Maybe they do occur and we don't notice them, but since the birth of the universe was a pretty big event, leaving lots of evidence, it doesn't seem to to work to say all the other uncaused events are too small to see. Nor does it work so say "oh, uncaused events would necessarily occur outside our universe." Why? It's has no causal precedence, they can occur wherever and whenever.

But any argument about God stemming from this problem seems not unlike the Fine Tuning Argument, but even harder to quantify, so I don't see it having legs.

That is only a problem if you treat the uncaused thing as an 'event'. But it does not have to be that way – it is simply the first, original state.

I fail to see how calling it something different changes the problem. Why should the uncaused and wholly unexplainable manifest in just one convenient way? Why can you have an uncaused first state but not an uncaused last state, a sudden uncaused end?

If a universe can blink into existence for no reason then it seems it can blink out of existence for no reason. In which case, maybe we should just assume the world, including ourselves and our memories, just began to exist in the past second, since that gives the universe less time to have vanished into the uncaused void from which it came?

IMO, an infinite regress seems more appealing. Such an infinite regress doesn't really require or specify the God of any existing religion either, so if I have to bite the bullet either way...

Or there are ways to avoid the infinite regress through logical necessity. For example, ontological arguments for God, or something like Behemism where the world is blown into existence by the force of contradiction— the necessity of resolving contradictions — being itself being a sort of dialectical engine (Hegel being an example of the latter). If successful, these avoid infinite regress. If they're actually successful in another question though.

Anselm and Gödel's ontological arguments have the dubious distinction of solid staying power in the face of many talented minds trying to find a definitive way to put them to rest while simultaneously convincing likely not one person to change their minds on the issue, which makes me think the pragmatic use of ontological arguments are even more dubious than the rest of the philosophy of religion.

When I was 16 or 17 I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and not having much in the way of exposure to philosophy, I was impressed and felt ready to argue with any atheist I had the chance to. — wonderer1

Wow. Same book and same attitude for me at the same age. I loved that dude back then.

Wow. Same book and same attitude for me at the same age. I loved that dude back then. — plaque flag

:lol:

How thing have changed, eh?

I'm kind of a C.S. Lewis own goal.

How thing have changed, eh? — wonderer1

Oh yeah. I've been an atheist so long that I can enjoy theological metaphors now. That god from the bible is about as real as Huckleberry Finn --and interesting to me on that literary level.

Oh yeah. I've been an atheist so long that I can enjoy theological metaphors now. — plaque flag

Yeah, I love The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I've been considering posting The Coming of the Ship at what is left of the Reasonable Faith Forums but I'm afraid doing so might come across as grandiose, instead of conveying what I want.

I bumped into a Gibran passage that spoke to me:

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.
http://www.katsandogz.com/gibran/onknowledge.php

I posted a link to that passage here on TPF recently. I don't think there is a chapter in which I don't find something that moves me deeply.

In an infinitely large multiverse of a certain kind, there are going to be worlds like ours, but where extreme statistical flukes are the norm. Suppose we're one of those worlds. Suppose that we have all the physical laws completely wrong, it's just that our instruments, through some bizarre effect like quantum tunneling, keep giving us the same supposedly accurate results, but these results are actually completely wrong. For example, the Andromeda galaxy might really just be a light year away, but all our measurements just keep being off by the exact same amount year after year (along with measurements that underpin our understanding of all the natural laws we think we know). How could we ever be sure we're not in one of those statistically fluky worlds?

Also, since there would be an infinite amount of these improbable worlds and an infinite amount of "normal" worlds, and countable infinite sets are the same size, how could you make a probabilistic argument that you're not in the set of improbable worlds? If both sets are the same size, and you didn't know which set you belonged to, isn't it equally likely you could be a member of either set?

I fail to see how calling it something different changes the problem. Why should the uncaused and wholly unexplainable manifest in just one convenient way? Why can you have an uncaused first state but not an uncaused last state, a sudden uncaused end? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because it is logically impossible. A 'last state' by definition entails that it is a result of transformation from another state. You are asking 'why can't we have a transformation that is not a result of transformation'?

If a universe can blink into existence for no reason then it seems it can blink out of existence for no reason. In which case, maybe we should just assume the world, including ourselves and our memories, just began to exist in the past second, since that gives the universe less time to have vanished into the uncaused void from which it came? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your assumption is that the first state is itself the result of an event or a transformation ('blinking'). That is also logically impossible, as it assumes another state (pre-blinking) before the first state. But there are no states before the first one by definition - the first event or transformation is from the first state to the second one. So no 'blinking' is involved - the first state just exists uncaused at the beginning of time.

IMO, an infinite regress seems more appealing. Such an infinite regress doesn't really require or specify the God of any existing religion either, so if I have to bite the bullet either way... — Count Timothy von Icarus

I always fail to see how the infinite regress solves any of those issues. EIther rationality/order of the reality requires an explanation or it does not.

IDK what you definition of state is. I figured you were talking about states in terms of physics, since physics is relevant to the cosmological argument. In physics a state is simply a set of variables describing a system at a given moment. Systems come into being and go out of being all the time in physics. However, they are all, to some degree, arbitrarily defined. We can give systems a definitive definition because we are the arbiters of what a system is, but that subjectiveness isn't helpful here.

Anyhow, defining the problem out of existence doesn't seem compelling. "An uncaused event can occur, but only once because of how we've defined our terms." It's a weak tautology IMHO. If all events can be described by physical state changes (a core premise of physicalism) then the line between "event" and "state transition" seems weak.

It's essentially akin to the claim that "talking about what came before the Big Bang is meaningless." Is it? I don't know, people don't seem to have any trouble thinking of something as causally prior to the Big Bang. Indeed, it is now popular scientific opinion that there was something before the Big Bang, Cosmic Inflation. And it seems likely that we will find out more about events prior to the Big Bang and potentially events prior to Cosmic Inflation. Hence the effort to redefine the "Big Bang" from its original scientific description into "time 0, the point before which we can claim that talking of cause is meaningless." IMO, this effort seems doomed as the interval between the earliest processes we think existed and the Big Bang as originally described continues to increase.

The uncaused has no limits, no cause can dictate its occurrence. What principle can explain why the uncaused can only be prior to the causal? I don't think definition does it. States transition causally, but its easy to imagine unchanged state transition and even build such things in toy universes.


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As to infinite regress, it solves the cosmological argument, and potentially the rationality problem.

Take Penrose's idea that the conditions of the late universe might be such that they result in another Big Bang. This makes the universe cyclical, without beginning or end. There is no start time to consider. Black Hole Cosmology is another such theory, one which I could see becoming popular with the right evidence, that might deny the existence of any "first state."

Now, if we can also show that the random cannot be eternal, cyclical in this way, this seems like it could explain rationality to some degree in terms of necessity, although IDK how such an argument would work exactly, I could be convinced though.

IDK what you definition of state is. I figured you were talking about states in terms of physics, since physics is relevant to the cosmological argument. In physics a state is simply a set of variables describing a system at a given moment. Systems come into being and go out of being all the time in physics. However, they are all, to some degree, arbitrarily defined. We can give systems a definitive definition because we are the arbiters of what a system is, but that subjectiveness isn't helpful here.

Anyhow, defining the problem out of existence doesn't seem compelling. "An uncaused event can occur, but only once because of how we've defined our terms." It's a weak tautology IMHO. If all events can be described by physical state changes (a core premise of physicalism) then the line between "event" and "state transition" seems weak. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If a transition, change or event occurs, it must be from something to something. I would define a 'state' as the totality of what comes before that transition. All that comes after the change would be another state, which could then change to another state etc.

And I am not defining the problem out of existence, I am pointing out the error of your assumptions. It seems you still do not see it, as you insist that I posit that 'an uncaused event can occur'. That is definitely not what I claim, on the contrary. You still treat the first state as an occurence, i.e. an event, a transition from something to something else. I am pointing out that it is logically incoherent, what I posit is the uncaused first state which is specifically NOT a result of event, occurence, transition, etc. So no, uncaused events cannot occur, events occur specifically because they are caused: a nature of one state results in its change to another state.

The uncaused has no limits, no cause can dictate its occurrence. What principle can explain why the uncaused can only be prior to the causal? I don't think definition does it. States transition causally, but its easy to imagine unchanged state transition and even build such things in toy universes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, you are asking 'why a second state cannot be a first state'? The simple answer: because then it would not be a second state. If you define a state as being subsequent to another state, then it must be so, because you have defined it that way.

I am not sure what you mean by 'unchanged state transition'.