Comments by "MC116" (@angelmendez-rivera351) on "Rationality Rules"
channel.
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
@MZONE991 I did not make up classical theism nor did I come up with the name. Further proof you are ignorant of it
Oh, c'mon. I was being fascetious. Of course I know you did not make-up classical theism. Poe's Law, I guess. My point is, though, that proclaiming to adhere to classical theism, as opposed to any other form of theism, adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. It does not make any claims or premises you present any more true or any better substantiated.
When I say "we define God this way" I am reffering to us classical theists, not people like WLC or most popular apologists.
I know that. But God is not well-defined in classical theism, any more than in other form of theism. This is what I was getting at. Immanence and transcendence are not well-formed properties, at least not in the presentation that most philosophers who adhere to classical theism present; let alone simplicity and timelessness.
But anyway, in contignent entities, it is always the case that they are a composition of essence and existence.
On basis of what? There is no universal agreement among philosophers that this view is true. Between essentialists and existentialists, there is a disagreement as to what roles essence and existence play, and how they are related. In Quinean ontology, though, existence is not even a property. Hence, it is incoherent to speak of essence and existence on the same grounds. Here, I can agree that for any given thing, (0) there is a set of properties, encoded in well-formed formulae in higher-order logic, that uniquely defines a thing, or classification of things, and (1) there is an existence clause that speaks of said set of properties being satisfied (instantiated) or not being satisfies, and this corresponds to the existence or non-existence of a thing in question. This much I can agree to.
Suppose we call the parts A, B and C. If A, B, and C don't interact with each other at all then it cannot be said that A and B and C compose one entity.
Says who? This is completely arbitrary, ontologically speaking. What if I consider every mereological sum of entities to be itself an entity? There is nothing incoherent about this. It may not be practical, but there is nothing fundamentally problematic with such an ontology.
If such parts interact from past eternity then this is literally a causal Loop, A interacts with B, B interacts with C, C with A and so on....
That is not what a causal loop is, though. This very obviously ignores the possibility of relative simultaneity of the parts interacting, in which case, there is no loop.
A causal loop is an infinite regress And since it has been shown to be impossible then the ground of all reality is an entity whose essence is identical to existence.
Okay, there are two issues here.
0. An infinite regress has not been shown to be impossible. To the contrary, I consider infinite regress to be the most plausible description of reality, mathematically and physically.
1. The fact that it is without parts does not imply that it is an entity whose essence is identical to existence. I know classical theism subscribes to the doctrine of divine simplicity, but that doctrine is precisely what we are scrutinizing here. It is precisely what you are being asked to demonstrate. Simply making the assertion will get us nowhere.
3
-
@MZONE991 There are schools within classical theism, but we all agree that God is divinely simple.
Good job missing the point. The agreement is irrelevant. The notion of divine simplicity is ill-defined. This would not change if every single human on the planet Earth accepted it as infallible doctrine.
Every entity that exists contingently has a certain essence.
Yes, but this is because every entity, contingent or not, has a certain essence. By definition, for something to be an entity, it must have an essence that defines it, and the existence of that essence must be satisfied.
Nothing can exist without an essence, thus we have a composition of essence and existence,...
No. That is not how composition works. Composition is a function of tuples of essences, not of essences and non-essences. Existence is not an essence, because existence is itself part of the description that qualifies what an essence is. So it is incoherent to talk about an entity being composed "of existence" and something else. No, the being merely either exists or does not exist, and the Boolean description of existence here is not a defining component of the being itself.
...and this is a composition because it is possible for that entity to not have existed in some possible world.
That is a baseless assertion. Leaving aside the fact that you are completely wrong as to how composition works, there is also the issue that there is no well-defined ontological characterization of what comprises a possible world.
Causal loops don't need to be time dependent,...
Yes, they do, by definition.
...even if the causation is timeless, this is still a causal loop.
No, it is not. Causation is temporal, by definition. Whatever it is you are describing, it is not a causal phenomenon. You are equivocating terminology here.
And Alexander Pruss has shown in his work that they are impossible using many arguments and paradoxes.
No. Alexander Pruss has claimed to prove their impossibility, but I am confident in saying he is mistaken. His argumens are not sound.
So a car that exists is a composition of its essence and existence.
No. There is no distinction between a car that exists, and a car that does not, because existence is not part of a car's identity/definition. A distinction between any two entities can only exist in essence, because the essence is literally what makes the entity in question. To put it more plainly: an entity is its essence. To say that an entity exists makes a difference in the ontological description of the world, but not of the entity.
Following the causal finitism principle, the first cause of everything has to be simple.
You are begging the question. The causal finitism principle is the very thing we are challenging and asking you to prove.
God is something that we can never fully understand.
This is a self-contradicting claim. In order to be able to claim this with sufficient justification, you would have to have sufficient knowledge about God, since this is not a claim that can be derived from first principles.
3
-
@yoichiswiftshot902 Fundamentally, people choose everything,...
Not according to the Bibles. According to the Bibles, Elohim, or alternatively, YHWH, is sovereign over all the world. Nothing happens unless YHWH permits it to happen. "When a prophet is deceived, I have deceived that prophet," says the beginning of Ezekiel 14:9.
...even in the Bible, Adam ignored God.
Adam did not choose to ignore Elohim. Elohim created Adam to be prone to deception. Adam being deceived was an inevitable consequence of Elohim's choices. Adam did not even have knowledge of "good and evil," so Adam had no awareness that he was doing such a thing as "ignoring" someone.
Do you not murder because your parents told you?
No. I do not murder, because, as I am not a psychopath, I do not enjoy murder. I would hate to do such a thing, and I find such a thing to be deeply unloving.
Were you born with perfect knowledge of good and evil?
No. Neither was Adam.
Do you not choose what you want?
We have the illusion of choice, but the scientific evidence does not support the conclusion that we have freedom of choice.
If you did it, then you chose it,...
This assumes we have freedom of choice, which I have already dismissed as a baseless assertion.
...there's rewards and social pressure for every action you take,...
No, not necessarily. The only actions that are rewarded are those that satisfy two conditions: (a) someone is willing to provide the reward, (b) that same someone is aware that the action has taken place, and knows how to find the person who committed it.
If God tells you to love your neighbor as you love yourself, it's like a parent teaching their children how to see the world.
No, it is not. YHWH has never told me anything. Delusional people insist that YHWH has said something, all without being able to prove it. Also, my parents are flawed people. My parents could be trying to teach me incorrect things - as many parents in the real world actually do. Therefore, accepting their teachings is not necessarily ethical. In fact, many of the things I learned from my parents were false. On the other hand, you are not willing to accept that anything YHWH says could be false, and you also have no way of proving that YHWH has ever said anything.
We can let the void of meaningless atheism guide us to nothing, since meaning is a made up social construct for human survival,...
No. "Meaning" is a concept we apply to words. We say that a word has meaning if there is a definition for the word that is known by someone.
...or we can let a God guide us into goodness, compassion, charity and all these other values that are getting hallowed from society, thanks to your secular worldview being so prominent.
0. No "god" is guiding you to do anything. Even if you have been brainwashed to delude yourself into thinking that someone else is responsible for your intuitions about what is ethical, you are still ultimately relying on those socio-biological intuitions, regardless of whatever fictional name you are choosing to attribute to those intuitions.
1. Compassion and charity are not being hallowed from society. To the contrary: compassion and charity are at an all-time high.
If your idea is so great, why are the results so bad?
The results are not even slightly "bad." You are thoroughly misinformed.
Suicide, divorce, mental health, baby killing, isolation, has all gotten worse in modern times.
No, it has not. This is factually incorrect, and you have no sources to support your claim.
Church means community,...
You can be without religion, not believe in the existence of mythological beings, and still belong to a community.
...it's not good for people to be alone and not apart of something,...
That is not for you to decide. Some people prefer being alone. Some people need to be alone.
If atheism has anything to say about it, then it's just for random chemicals to shoot in our brain for survival sake, and that's depressing just to hear.
0. "Atheism" has nothing to say about it, because "atheism" is not a worldview. "Atheism" is merely the stance of not being convinced that a mythological being exists in the actual world.
1. Chemicals in the brain are not random. I suggest you take an introductory course to chemistry. Maybe I can buy you a textbook. Chemistry is deterministic, just as all physical processes are.
2. There is nothing "depressing" about hearing that the entirety of our bodies can be accurately described as a physical system. In fact, most people who have this understanding are mentally healthy.
The smartest people ever were agnostic or religious, along with the greatest people.
This is false. Some of the "smartest" or "greatest" people in history (whatever this means) were indeed religious, but many were deists, and some were atheists. Also, the "worst" people in history were religious.
Now we have transgenderism becoming prevalent,...
No, transgender people always existed, and they probably comprised the same proportion of people they do today. Their existence not being recorded in writing as commonly is not indicative of them not having existed. The fact that society has evolved towards becoming more accepting of people's gender identity is one thing, but this has no bearing on how prevalent transgender people have been historically.
...we're so stupid without god...
There is no evidence to support this assertion. The evidence indicates that there is a strong positive correlation between irreligiousity, and higher education. This does not demonstrate a causal link, but it does categorically disprove your assertion. Your assertion is false.
...we somehow argue there's more than men and women by saying it's a social construct.
No, more like, we argue that there is no such a thing as "men" or "women." Biologically speaking, people have different sexual characteristics, but these characteristics are impossible to identify for a layperson beyond, superficially, their genitalia, and for 99% of the people that you will ever meet, you will never know what their genitalia is, or accurately be able to guess what it is, anyway. Moreover, as your biological characteristics are literally irrelevant outside of the bed, and irrelevant to anyone besides your mating partner and the medics responsible for your healthcare, they have absolutely no bearing on how you should be named, how should you speak, what jobs you should have, what sports you should be allowed to participate in, what people you should be allowed to participate with, how you should dress, what social traits people should expect you to exhibit, or how you should be treated by others in general. As such, "masculinity" and "femininity" are entirely fictitious concepts, examples of a societal delusion. They are the remnants from a time when people lacked an understanding of human biology, and incorrectly believed that people with some sexual characteristics were literally a different biological species from people with certain other sexual characteristics, and were thus classified as "not human," and were thus treated like property. They are essentially mythological, archaic constructs, no different than the belief in YHWH or Zeus.
Every single word is a social construct.
Every word is a social construct, but the concepts being represented or named by those words are not necessarily social constructs. For example, the existence of electrons is not a social construct. Their existence is demonstrable, independent of the delusions that society holds to. Gender cannot be demonstrated to exist in such a manner. Gender is nothing more than what society has deluded itself into thinking it is.
Atheism only accomplished making everyone feel no accountability, because everything means nothing, and now we're getting dumber for it.
0. "Atheism" has accomplished no such thing, because "atheism" is not a worldview.
1. I can assure you that there are no atheists or irreligious people who assert that "everything means nothing." The sentence "everything means nothing" is not even a coherent utterance.
2. There is no evidence that we are getting "dumber," this is a completely baseless assertion.
3
-
@DoofusChungus ...if God wanted to create a universe that works, it would be in a way that makes sense in this universe.
This statement is hardly coherent. If God wants to create a universe, then They are free to create it however They want to, since they are omnipotent. On top of that, even if the type of life God wants to create is physically incompatible with the just created universe, God can still choose to create that life in that universe, and have it be self-sustained within that universe. Again, God can do this, since They are omnipotent, which means that They are not limited by physical restrictions. Bold of you to assume that physical restrictions could ever put a hamper on God's all-creative powers. Also, if a particular universe created is physically incompatible with a type of life being created, then why are these two incompatible? Is God not the one choosing to make them physically incompatible?
If God created the universe with certain logic and physics purposefully, why would he choose to go back on it?
This is a strawman. No one in this thread (or anywhere) has suggested that God should go back on Their creation and start all over. The argument being presented is simply that, in the presence of an omnipotent creator, there cannot exist such a thing as fine-tuning. You see, by definition, fine-tuning a phenomenon to an external parameter refers to calibrating the parameters of the phenomenon to be compatible with the external parameter. This act of calibration for compatibility insinuates that there are restrictions that need ti be accounted for to make a given phenomenon-external paramater combination possible. However, God is omnipotent. Therefore, no such restrictions exist. Therefore, there is calibration that is possible, by definition, since no restrictions exist in the combinations existed. Therefore, there is no fine-tuning. If classical theism is true, then it is, by definition, impossible for fine-tuning to exist when it comes to creation. Since fine-tuning does not exist, it quite literally cannot serve as evidence for the existence of God.
For me to be typing this comment on this phone, trillions upon trillions of coincidences had to happen for trillions upon trillions of other coincidences to happen,...
Coincidences? According to who? Because, I know you do not believe these are coincidences, you believe these are consequences of God's creative will. And I also know that I, like most non-theists, do not believe these are coincidences either. I cannot speak for the other non-theists in the thread, but I can speak for myself, so I will just clarify this right now: I am a physicalist. As a physicalist, I do not believe there exists such a thing as a "coincidence," because the word "coincidences" implies that events in the universe occur randomly. They do not occur randomly, though. As far as all evidence available points to, the universe is deterministic, which means that every physical interaction that happens happens with a probability of 1. Well, that is an oversimplification, though. I am not a classical determinist, because as a physicalist, I account for the existence of quantum phenomena. As such, I instead hold that quantum determinism holds. Even then, the conclusion is essentially the same: in the sense that you apparently meant it, I do not believe there exists such a thing as a "coincidence." So, again, I ask you: trillions of coincidences had to happen, according to who?
Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.
Yes. And?
I believe the point of that was to show that, despite all of the coincidences that needed to happen for any of us to to be here, we are still here.
Well, no. There were no coincidences that happened. Every event that happened along the way can be entirely explained via the scientific method.
By some miracle our parents, out of billions of people in the world somehow happened to be in the right place at the right time.
There is absolutely nothing miraculous about it. Do you not know how many sexual couples exist on planet Earth? There are literally billions of them. Also, the right place at the right time? Hm... I was born in a colony, into poverty, into a land with high crime rates, with several chronic health issues, to a dysfunctional family, and raised in an unsanitary environment. Sorry, but that is definitely not "the right place, at the right time."
Not to mention, for each generation, the correct sperm [cell] had to make it.
There is no "correct" sperm cell. The probability that in any given generation, some sperm cell was going to fertilize an ovum, would have been extremely high, and you would have been whatever that sperm cell was, because it necessarily would have been impossible for you to not be, since clearly, you were born.
It would be "finely tuned" so that everything that has happened or existed would happen or exist.
No, it would not be finely-tuned. God is omnipotent. You believe this, right? If God is omnipotent, then the exact sequence of events that led to our existence would have been possible in all universes, because God could have simply chosen to trigger the sequence of events at will, without having to worry about whether it is physically impossible or not: They transcend physical constraints. Am I wrong in claiming that you believe God is omnipotent? Am I wrong in claiming that you believe God transcends physical constraints?
Who knows if God has to abide by the laws of this universe or not? That part of the question really does not matter.
Who knows? Does this mean you do not believe God is omnipotent, or am I misunderstanding the question? As to whether it matters or not: it absolutely does matter. If God is omnipotent, then They are not constrained by the physical incompatibility between a given universe, and the life They create in it. As such, it is genuinely impossible for any God-created universe to be uninhabitable, since God can always create life in such a universe.
The real question is, why wouldn't he?
Why would They?
If he created the universe a certain way, with the whole of the future already planned out, then what would be the point of changing anything?
Once again, no one is arguing that God should change anything. We are discussing the impossibility of fine-tuning in the presence of an omnipotent creator. We are not discussing the problem of evil, nor making any judgments on whether God should have created the universe the way creationists claim They did or not.
3
-
3
-
@x-popone6817 Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
This is completely meaningless unless you define what you mean by "begin to exist", and what you mean by "cause". That being said, by most definitions of the word "beginning", this premise is at least debatable.
The universe began to exist.
By most definitions of the word "beginning", this premise is completely unsubstantiated. It is an assumption, not a fact.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Yes, this does follow from the premises, but the premises are questionable, and even if I grant the premises too, this only establishes that the universe had a cause. The argument fails to establish the nature of the cause.
there are implications of what this cause is and what properties it has
No, there are not. Any claims concerning the properties of such a cause are necessarily speculative and unprovable.
It does get you to a mind, as I already explained.
No, it does not, and you have not explained anything. All you have done is claim that it does, and followed it up with "please, trust me", which is not an explanation.
The Big Bang was the beginning.
No, it was not, and I would know this, since I am a physicist, as I already said in a previous comment.
Even if it wasn't necessarily and it was just a singularity,...
Here you go, using the word "singularity" without having any idea of what it means. No, it could not have been a singularity, because singularities are not physical objects that exist, singularities are mathematical artifacts. You can literally find this in the Wikipedia article on singularity.
...you would still face the problem of how an impersonal force like that can expand at a point and not have the effect permanently.
Effect permantly? You are just linking nonsense together. As for expanding from a point, there is no evidence that the universe's expansion began from a single point.
The universe can't be because then we would be eternal.
No, that is a non sequitur. Our eternality does not follow from the universe's eternality. The age of the objects contained in the universe is not beared upon by the age of the universe. The universe is 13.8Ε9 years old, but that does not mean we humans are that old. The universe has average temperature 2.3 K, but that does not mean we have said temperature. A property that is had by the universe as a whole does not need to be had by its constituent parts.
Its finite.
There is actually no conclusive evidence demonstrating that the universe is finite in volume.
The universe is expanding, if you reverse that, you get a beginning.
No, you do not. If you reverse the expansion of the universe, you get to an immeasurably hot and dense state of the universe, such that any further contraction is not coherent with current physical theory, and this state of the universe is known to occur at the end of the Planck epoch.
If there is a mind with free will, he can create the universe, no problem.
No, not necessarily. If we have free will, that does not mean we can create a universe.
if the cause of the universe was impersonal, that can't happen since there's no person, no free will.
This is just an speculation, not a fact. You have not proven that this is true, you have merely assumed it is true, and then you expect us to agree. Non-intelligent processes can cause things. Meteorites cause craters. Stars cause hypernovas. Stars are not intelligent beings, and neither are meteors. Besides, you are begging the question. You are trying to prove the universe has a cause, but in order to do so, you are assuming that the universe had to be created, which is more specific than just being caused. "Caused" and "created" mean different things. If something was created, then it was caused, but being caused does not imply it was created. You do not get to just smuggle non-synonyms into your argument.
The effect should've been clearly eternal as well,...
No. Causes need not transfer their properties to their effects. This is just another assumption. Actually, not only is this not substantiated, but it is demonstrably false. Humans can cause objects to exist that are not themselves sentient. There. Cause-to-effect transfer of properties has been falsified.
How am I dishonest?
You make false claims, knowing that they are false, and you proclaim yourself to be more knowledgeable on topics of science despite not being a scientist. You also refuse to define your terms rigorously, but insist in still presenting an argument. These are all defining characteristics of dishonesty.
Atheists ALWAYS claim us Christians or theists are dishonest.
No, not always, but very often, yes. Is this surprising to you? It should not be. We make this claim so often because it tends to be true far more often than not.
Atheism is not some ultimate standard where everyone that disagrees is dishonest.
You are right, and not every theist is dishonest. Some theists are merely ignorant. You, in particular, just so happen to be both.
I wouldn't be surprised if you think almost all YouTube apologists are dishonest.
They ARE dishonest. Apologetics actively requires that scientific data and mathematical concepts be misrepresented to prove a point.
This is not to mention the philosophical grounds for the finitude of the past.
All the philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past are flawed. In fact, professional philosophers generally do not take them seriously. Only theologians and apologists specifically do.
3
-
2
-
2
-
@user-fb2jb3gz1d I like the constant digs at my character...
I take digs at you, because you have been acting in a way that is very intellectually dishonest this entire time. You seem to not have any care for details or for anything that you are not willing to accept as true, so you barely even listen to what people tell you. Not unlike someone else from earlier in this thread.
What I'm saying is, that to prove their experimental verified predictions are correct, they have to compare that to the real thing. And the really thing happened a long time ago. Thus, no one can truly verify if their experimental verified predictions are correct.
No, comparing it to "the real thing" is not at all necessary to verify the data. This is a classical misconception about how the scientific method works. Besides, you ignored the part where I mentioned that the conditions have been reproduced in particle accelerators. See? This is why I take digs at you: because whenever I say something inconvenient for you, you simply ignore it. I am not even sure why I am even bothering to talk to you at this point.
Who is to say that tomorrow, they will not discover something that puts the 370,000 number further or closer away?
The experiments have been conducted so many times that, by now, the probability that an experiment could find completely different data is close to 0. And, even if a new study did find such data, this would not actually accomplish much of anything. I mean, in that case, the most likely scenario is that were was an error in the methdology. You seem to be under the impression that if a single study finds data contradicting all previous studies, that this automatically proves all the previous studies wrong. That is not how it works.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@nics4967 I accept that there is evidence that is interpreted by some to mean as you say. The problem is, did they interpret it properly?
If you are going to initiate this discussion by already dismissing their findings on the basis that you disagree with the interpretation, without having even looked at the evidence, then I have no reason to engage on the topic seriously. See, this is exactly the thing I was warning you about in my previous comment.
It may show levels of devoutness, not lack of doctrine.
How are you making this assessment when I have not even cited my sources yet? This is the lack of intellectual honesty I was talking about earlier. You are not actually interested in engaging with the evidence. You have an apologetics script prepared beforehand, ready to pull out some bullet point in response to anything anyone says, rather than engaging with integrity and a sound epistemology.
Biden goes to Mass. If he didn't, does that show there is not an expectation to go on Sunday.
Why are you comparing 1 human being to an entire civilization of thousands of human beings? Biden is only one person out of 300 million people in the United States of America. What Biden does or does not do has no relevance, as far as archaeology is concerned, when describing the practices of modern Usayite civilization as a whole.
Your argument is pretty obviously fallacious, but this is the issue: you do seem to not really care about it being fallacious. You seem to have put no effort into it at all. This sounds like something you regurgitated, something you pulled out of a script. Again, I have not even cited my sources, and you are already trying to debunk them. There is saying that goes "Don't judge a book by its cover." Dude, you have not even looked at the cover of the book at all, and you are already judging it!
What seems needed is evidence of doctrinal development that can not be explained by laxity.
This is an entirely baseless assertion.
Some experts think there is evidence in biology for I.D.
No. There is one "expert" in the world who alleges that I.D. is true, but he has never presented a single piece of evidence to support his claim, he has not conducted a single experiment testing his hypothesis. This is completely different from the situation in archaeology I am referencing here.
I'm interested.
Your comments demonstrate otherwise. Are you lying, or are you just extremely lacking in self-awareness?
You dismissed the evidence without even waiting for me to cite my sources. No who is genuinely interested would do such a thing.
Why can't I start with such when there isn't anyway to know if the person is interested in honest dialogue?
I do not understand what this particular sentence is saying, but I suspect that you are criticizing me for taking the approach I took for initiating the conversation. I could be wrong, because your sentence lacks coherence. If I am right, though, then let me say this: if you want other people to be serious with you, then you need to demonstrate that you are serious with them. You did not do this. I had to warn you, because I needed to avoid miscommunication, and make sure you understand that I will not waste my time. You had the opportunity of making good use of the warning and replying to me with intellectual honesty. Dismissing the evidence prior to looking at it, obviously, does not satisfy the criterion of intellectual honesty. Why are you complaining in spite of this? I have no idea.
I would hold on philosophy on theology, I am morally obligated, to be honest.
...or so you say, but you have not demonstrated any honesty whatsoever in this conversation. Are religious people unaware of what intellectual honesty actually looks like? Because you continue acting as if you really believe you are honest, but your comments demonstrate such a seamless intellectual dishonesty, I find it impossible to believe you.
I will stand by what I said earlier. Whether you truly are sincere or not, your standards for what count as "honesty" are so clearly different from what reasonable individuals hold, there is no point in me trying to have this discussion with you.
I wish you a good life.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
Why would I need to rephrase a definition? Do you not understand the definition? If you do not understand the definition, then you are not qualified to be having this conversation with anyone at all. If you do understand the definition, then there is no need for me to rephrase. If I were your teacher, then I absolutely would rephrase. However, you came into this conversation correcting everyone else, as equals, pretending you already knew enough about the topic to actually present arguments and issue corrections from it.
So, you have two options here: (A) you can continue pretending to understand the topic, and we can have a conversation as equals, but in the process, I will continue exposing your ignorance and your lies until you have walked yourself into a deadly corner, because regardless of how much you are pretending, you are still not knowledgeable enough to present well-substantiated argument. Option (B) is, you can admit that you were pretending to know about the topic when you actually know little to nothing, and stop issuing corrections you are not qualified to make. In that case, we can still have a conversation as equals, and one in which we are both being intellectually honest. In that case, I would gladly rephrase the definition, and then we can openly have a discussion as to how both the Christian narrative and the Greek narrative are examples of mythology.
It is your decision to make, and you are the one at odds here to miss out.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
Wikipedia is not a scholarly source, though. Neither are documentaries. Actually, to be honest, Wikipedia is hundreds of times more reliable than a documentary. Also, it should be mentioned that George Lemaître was explicit in telling everyone, including the Pope, to not misinterpret his theory as being about the book of Genesis at all. He came up with the theory by analyzing Einstein's field equations, and realizing that the equations necessarily predict the expansion of spacetime. Meanwhile, most theologians were against the idea, because they believed a steady-state universe better reflected God's perfections. As for cosmologists, they only accepted the steady-state model, because that was exactly what the evidence suggested, prior to Lemaître's work. But it was not secular cosmologists who opposed the changes. It was people like Fred Hoyle who did.
2
-
Well, you are right, but this problem is fixed as soon as you replace "infinity" with "Aleph(0)", and then there is a legitimate question to pose: if the Earth orbits 30 times as fast as Saturn, and both planets have been orbiting for Aleph(0) years, then they must have both completed Aleph(0) orbits. How can this be possible?
Thankfully, mathematics have an answer to this. The reason this seems like an absurdity is due to a misconception that we have, regarding the way sizes of sets work. Intuitively, we think that if X is a proper subset of Y, then Y must have a larger size than X, because it has every element X has, and then some other elements, so intuitively, the number must be larger. However, if there happens to be a bijection from X to Y, then X and Y are the same size, because they have the same cardinality, and every element can be matched correspondingly, even if X is a proper subset of Y. This is counterintuitive. This phenomenon is called Cantor's property, and it is a property that only sets that are infinite satisfy: they can be the same size as proper subsets of themselves. This property is the property, so unintuitive, that mathematicians prior to Cantor simply could not accept, and which is why the idea of infinite objects was not accepted mathematically until Cantor developed his set theory. By rejecting the property, you are required to accept certain implications, and therefore, certain contradictions and absurdities. Rather than doing that, mathematicians dispensed with the idea of infinite sets altogether. Cantor gave them serious treatment, and his discovery is what led to realizing that our intuition was wrong, and that Cantor's property needs to be taken seriously. At the core of this, lies a profound and unexpected revelation: that for infinite sets, there actually do exist two distinct, incompatible notions of size. These are order type and cardinality. As it happens, these two notions are equivalent when dealing with finite sets, but distinct when dealing with infinite sets. This explains why Cantor's property is so counterintuitive to us: order type concerns membership of elements in a set, and it concerns properties of subsets of a set. So proper subset of Y has a different order type than Y does, even though the two sets may have the same cardinality, because there may exist a bijection between the two sets. What this also reveals to us is that addition with infinite quantities works differently than it does with natural numbers. Actually, to be more concrete, there are two different kinds of addition for infinite numbers: one with regards to cardinality, and one with regards to order type, and these are called cardinal addition and ordinal addition. This explains the inherent weirdness behind the concept of "infinity + 1 = infinity": because when considering cardinal addition, ω ++ 1 = ω, but when considering ordinal addition, ω < ω + 1. This is because, introducing one new element to your infinite set does not change its cardinality, but it does change its order type. For natural numbers and finite sets, both notions are indistinguishable: a set A with 8 elements and a set B with 5 elements has a larger cardinality, because there is an injection f : B —> A, but there is no injection g : A —> B. On the other hand, it is also true that 8 comes after 5 in the sense of an order relation: I need to keep counting further to get to 8 than I do to get to 5. So 5 < 8. These notions are equivalent for natural numbers, but not for infinite sets. 5 + 3 = 8, regardless of whether I consider cardinal addition or ordinal addition, but not so for ω + 1.
2
-
@Melesniannon Substituting one linguistic absurdity for another absurdity still affects nothing in reality.
Nothing that I have said here is a matter of linguistics. It is a matter of mathematics. None of the things I have mentioned here are absurdities, either. Just because a theologian many centuries ago called it an absurdity, due to the counterintuitive nature of the phenomenon. For it to be an absurdity, it has to be a logical contradiction, which it is not, in this case. The claim Aleph(0) = 2·Aleph(0) is not a logical contradiction.
If the cardinality of a set is defined as infinity, and infinity is undefined, then the cardinality is undefined and thus can't be said to equal anything, least of all another undefined infinity.
There are various misconceptions in this argument that need to be addressed.
0. Infinity is not a cardinality, so the cardinality of a set cannot be defined as infinity, this is nonsensical. It is however, sensical to say that a set is infinite and that the set has a given cardinality. They idea to understand here is that two sets can be infinite, but have different cardinalities. As such, different infinite cardinalities exist, and so it is nonsensical to define infinity as being a cardinality itself.
1. Infinity is not undefined. Infinity is a property of sets. It is, however, accurate to say that infinity is not an object, and so you cannot say that "infinity = infinity". However, I at no point have made the claim that "infinity = infinity". My claim is that Aleph(0) = 2·Aleph(0). Yes, Aleph(0) is an infinite cardinality, but it certainly is not the only infinite cardinality, and so it itself is not "infinity", which refers to a property of sets. I know you have said earlier that you are not a mathematician, but my claim that Aleph(0) = 2·Aleph(0) is not particularly technical and can be understood by mathematicians. I do not want to be accused of saying "infinity = infinity", because I have never made such a claim.
It's the turtle and hare "paradox" where the hare can never catch up to the turtle, as long as you regress the time interval infinitely. Yet in reality, that turtle eats the hare's dust.
The issue with these arguments from paradox is that these paradoxes never constitute an actual contradiction, they only always constitute apparent contradictions, originated from a fault in deduction that is not detected by our intuition. This is because our intuitions are not logical in nature. The idea that, as long as you regress the hare's time interval infinitely, the hare can never pass the turtle, is flawed, but the flaw does not lie in the assumption of infinite regress, the flaw lies in the assumption that infinite intervals cannot be traversed.
While you can validly state that infinity = infinity, when two potential infinities are contingent upon the same constant which affects them differently, stating they are identical is nonsense.
I have no idea what you just said here, but I will say that 0. potential infinities are not a thing in mathematics, and so, not a thing in reality, they are just an outdated concept invented by ancient philosophers from a time before we understood how infinity works, 1. I never claimed infinity = infinity.
You yourself pointed this out when talking about order addition, which is fundamentally the same as what I do: thinking about infinity in multiple dimensions,...
No, ordinal addition is not fundamentally what you are talking about, and it also has nothing to do with thinking about infinity "in different dimensions", whatever that means.
...which in my simple example I was referring to a WIDTH and not a LENGTH.
Oh, for fuck's sake, seriously? Width and length are literally the same thing, mathemagically. In the English language, we use different words for them to account for the direction of the line segment we are interested in, but as far as measurement and size goes, they are literally identical concepts: the distance from an end A of an object to the other end B of the object in a certain direction.
At any point on its length, the surface area of the 2 cm wide line is twice that of the 1 cm wide line. It doesn't matter that both are potentially infinite in length, this will be always true.
Again, potential infinity is a meaningless concept. As for your actual claim, yes, it is true, only if the point at its length being considered is finite.
However, if you do that the Kalam cosmological argument breaks instantly, because you no longer have causality,...
Dude, I never even said the Kalam cosmological argument works. I am an atheist. I thought this was very clear from my very first reply. sigh Well, I suppose trying to have a conversation with you was a waste of my time. I have no idea why I ever hoped to be understood by you. Good bye.
2
-
2
-
@charlesmadison1384 From Wikipedia, "...the theory describes an increasingly concentrated cosmos preceded by a singularity in which space and time lose meaning (typically named "the Big Bang singularity")."
I suggest that, next time you try to quote an article, you actually bother to provide the quote in-context, rather than taking it out of context and giving it your own unwarranted spin. The article on the Big Bang starts with "The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution.[1][2][3] The model describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature,[4] and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure." This is how the Big Bang theory, at its most basic level, is defined by the scientific community. What follows afterward is not a definition, but merely a pointing of relevant facts: for example, "Crucially, the theory is compatible with Hubble–Lemaître law—the observation that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from Earth. Extrapolating this cosmic expansion backwards in time using the known laws of physics, the theory describes an increasingly concentrated cosmos preceded by a singularity in which space and time lose meaning (typically named "the Big Bang singularity").[5] Detailed measurements of the expansion rate of the universe place the Big Bang singularity at around 13.8 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the universe.[6]" This is why context is important. Your out-of-context quote paints this non-scientific source as presenting said quote as the defining feature of the Big Bang. An in-context analysis reveals instead that this idea of the singularity is merely one model of the theory historically arrived at by a rather simple extrapolation, which is compatible with other well-evidenced phenomena.
In the "Features of the Model" section of the article, there is more detail as to why your initial comment on the Big Bang theory is inaccurate. Specifically, in the "Expansion of Space" subsection, we have, "The expansion of the Universe was inferred from early twentieth century astronomical observations and is an essential ingredient of the Big Bang theory. Mathematically, general relativity describes spacetime by a metric, which determines the distances that separate nearby points. The points, which can be galaxies, stars, or other objects, are specified using a coordinate chart or "grid" that is laid down over all spacetime. The cosmological principle implies that the metric should be homogeneous and isotropic on large scales, which uniquely singles out the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) metric. This metric contains a scale factor, which describes how the size of the universe changes with time. This enables a convenient choice of a coordinate system to be made, called comoving coordinates. In this coordinate system, the grid expands along with the universe, and objects that are moving only because of the expansion of the universe, remain at fixed points on the grid. While their coordinate distance (comoving distance) remains constant, the physical distance between two such co-moving points expands proportionally with the scale factor of the universe.[16]". So in summary, part of what the Big Bang Theory comprises is the fact that the spacetime universe we are familiar with has the FLWR metric, which results in a homogeneous, isotropic expansion of spacetime. This explains the precise mechanism by which the universe went from its earliest states to the current state. Nowhere in this expansion is there any causation to account for. Furthermore, "The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distances between comoving points. In other words, the Big Bang is not an explosion in space, but rather an expansion of space.[4] Because the FLRW metric assumes a uniform distribution of mass and energy, it applies to our universe only on large scales—local concentrations of matter such as our galaxy do not necessarily expand with the same speed as the whole Universe.[17]". In other words, there was not something that went "bang", because there was no "bang" to begin with, despite the misleading name of the theory, which is actually the result of Fred Hoyle mocking the theory and misunderstanding it.
Do you take note of the keyword "precede"?
"Precede" is not a keyword here, and there is nothing here to take note of, as you are misunderstanding what the out-of-context quote is saying in-context. As I said, there was no object that went "bang". The so-called singularity refers to the fact that for time 0 of the stages of the universe, the mathematics of general relativity result in nonsensical results. As Wikipedia itself put it in the first paragraph of the subsection "Singularity" in the "Timeline" section, "Extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past.[20] This irregular behavior, known as the gravitational singularity, indicates that general relativity is not an adequate description of the laws of physics in this regime. Models based on general relativity alone can not extrapolate toward the singularity—before the end of the so-called Planck epoch.[5]" In other words, there is no event called "singularity" that "preceded" the Big Bang. The singularity simply refers to a point of spacetime in the universe where the laws of physics are not well-understood and require a new theory to be well-understood. This singularity just so happens to take place during the Planck epoch. Look, the article even expands on this later on, in the "Inflation and Baryogenesis" subsection, saying "The period from 0 to 10−43 seconds into the expansion, the Planck epoch, was a phase in which the four fundamental forces — the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and the gravitational force, were unified as one.[25] In this stage, the characteristic scale length of the universe was the Planck length, 1.6×10−35 m, and consequently had a temperature of approximately 1032 degrees Celsius. Even the very concept of a particle breaks down in these conditions. A proper understanding of this period awaits the development of a theory of quantum gravity.[26][27] The Planck epoch was succeeded by the grand unification epoch beginning at 10−43 seconds, where gravitation separated from the other forces as the universe's temperature fell.[25]". So, for all we know, the events of the Planck epoch may not obey the same type of causal relations that events in posterior epochs obey in the first place, and so there may not need to be anything that precedes time 0, or anything, of the sort.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@JelloBeanzer This is a sin in itself.
No, it is not. Nowhere in the books is it stated to be.
Someone who actually reads their Bible and tries to comprehend it without bias would know that the verses used to support slavery were about the relationship between man and god, not man and man.
No, this is false. The verses very explicitly talk about interhuman interactions, and never mention YHWH as being involved in the interaction.
Not to mention that there's not a single white person in the Bible, making all racial arguments immediately void, because there's no mention of whites being more deserving.
You are ignoring the historical context behind the arguments they presented back then, as well as their actual content. To start with, the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans were very much classified as "white" by the so-called "racial scientists." Since they featured prominently in the Bibles, the statement that there are no "white" peoples in the Bibles are objectionable. As for the historical context, the backdrop for these arguments was an ideology known as Manifest Destiny, a worldview that stated that the Anglo-Saxon race was chosen by God Himself to bring Christianity and the Gospel to all the inferior races of the world, and to destroy the enemies of God, and that the United States of America were going to set the stage for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. There were entire books and doctrines written on the ideology, this was not some whimsical concept thrown around only to preserve slavery. This concept had already been around for centuries before the Civil War.
In religion, it's the same as studying a scientific study, and oversimplifying the results of it to prove an opinion.
The problem is that religious thinking encourages this. The very spine-and-backbone of religions' existence is this type of rhetorical strategy. Christianity was built almost entirely by cherry-picking concepts from Hellenism, Second Temple Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and the various Roman religions, and syncretizing them together into one belief system, going so far as to distort the meaning of texts in the Tanakh, and re-interpret it in far-fetched ways to claim that Christianity is the correct religion over Judaism. As far as religion is concerned, this is a form of divine revelation, not a form of intellectual dishonesty.
There is no "what if," simply understanding the logic behind anything can be unbiased and objective (to an extent).
The "to an extent" caveat makes the argument self-defeating.
Slavery in the Bible typically in the context of indentured servitude,...
No, it is not. There are plenty of verses about owning people as property for life.
...and not the typical view of slavery.
Biblical slavery is not identical to chattel slavery, and is slightly less brutal, but it definitely is a form of slavery, and not merely indentured servitude.
And racism is not supported in the Bible.
This is just false. The Bible very explicitly condones ethic cleansing (an extreme form of racism), and it also portrays clear prejudice against the Canaanites and against Egyptians, as well as many other ethnic groups.
Again, making the biblical justifications for slavery immediately void in the whole context of the Bible.
If your assertions were true, then maybe, but they are not true. I honestly do question whether you have read any of the Bibles at all.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@SlimThrull I've looked other places, no one wants to discuss it let alone answer a fairly simple question.
Interesting. Thank you for confirming my hypothesis. So this was the case after all. Also, if you want to insist that the question is simple, despite it obviously not veing so, then you do not deserve to have it answered.
I have no doubt you do question my sincerity, as you think I'm "demanding" an answer.
I have no idea why you think I would expect you to doubt my claim that I think you are insincere. Saying "I have no doubt..." as if that adds anything to the conversation is weird, suspicious, and only reinforces my point about your insincerity, ironically.
No reasonable person could possibly come to that conclusion with what I posted.
You would be right, if your standards for "reasonable" were not so skewed and disingenuous.
There was no demand anywhere. You're assuming things that simply aren't true. Naturally, this leads to bad conclusions on your part.
Right, which is why you were able to refute my claims so easily— oh, wait. You refuted nothing.
Well, anyway, I am not going to entertain having a full blown discussion with you, especially because I know this will just boil down to ad hominems. I merely commented to provide with you constructive criticism regarding your bad attitude. You proved my point, and chose to reject the criticism. This is fine by me, as it is ultimately none of my business. My job is done here. Ciao.
2
-
@caiomateus4194 Philosophy is not at all grounded in common sense. Quite the opposite, really: philosophy is all about going against common sense. Hence you have things such as solipsism and what not. And besides, 2 + 2 = 4 is legitimately false is you are working in a finite field of characeristic 3. Also, I should let you know that most of science defies common sense, and a lot of mathematics as well. For example, in mathematics, we have a theorem that say that there are true statements that cannot be proven to be true. This is completely contrary to common sense, and yet it is a theorem, a fact. The entirety of quantum theory is just so flabberghasting that "defying common sense" is a huge understatement. I say this as someone with a degree in physics who specializes in quantum physics. Common sense is stupidly overrated. Which is all the more reason why the Kalam argument is so stupid. The Kalam argument is not good philosophy. It is just sophistry. No self-respecting philosopher takes the Kalam seriously: only apologists, and philosophers who are specifically dedicated to countering especially bad arguments, take the argument seriously, though the latter take the argument seriously because it needs debunking to a bunch of people.
2
-
2
-
3:52 - 3:59 Yes, that is precisely where we should start. I am glad this is the approach Rationality Rules is taking here, because I always find that other channels analyzing the argument fail to explain what exactly is it that is problematic with the premises, and it makes it confusing for both theists and nontheists.
4:04 - 4:30 To elaborate on this, we work with formal theories to discuss existence in any given context. We start with first-order logic, or possibly, second-order logic, and this enables us to use the existential quantifier "There is some" and the universal quantifier "For all." We then find a set of axioms telling us about what we say must or must not exist, along with some proof-theoretic criteria to derive other existence propositions from the axioms. These criteria, ideally, will be based on verificationist epistemology. This also requires having some primitive notions. The most prominent example of such a formal ontology is axiomatic set theory: especifically, Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, where the primitive notions are sets. The ontology is about which sets exist and which sets do not exist. Something like this is mere abstraction, though, and is not an ontology that has immediate consequences for discussing physics, for example.
4:40 - 4:46 A more careful phrasing of this definition is that "There exists some t such that for all t' > t, X exists at t' AND such that for all t'' < t, X does not exist at t''." This is what I would take as the definition for the notational abbreviation "X begins to exist (at t)." This much precision is needed if one wants to effectively demonstrate the fallacy in the old cosmological Kalam. But I applaud Rationality Rules for getting this right in spirit, because it is important to understand this definition and its implications.
5:35 - 5:50 I hope this video delves deeper into the tensed theory of time and explains why it is unscientific, since this is a key task in debunking the old Kalam, and even the new Kalam.
6:02 - 6:07 Immediately, this is a problematic definition. Christian apologists like to do this thing where they define some undefined terminology in terms of other terminology that is also undefined, and like to pretend that this somehow solves the problem. What does it mean for something to "come into being"? Defining "begins to exist" in terms of "come into being" achieves nothing, since "come into being" itself requires defining.
6:08 - 6:45 The problem with this definition lies, not with the definition itself, but with how WLC interprets it. He claims that this definition merely formalizes the notion of past finitude, but it does not. Because it is not sufficient that the object has past finitude. It is necessary that x exists at t AND there be some t' < t such that x does not exist. This is what his requirement (ii) is in the definition, and translating the definition as formalizing past finitude ignores this requirement altogether. Why? Because it is possible that the length of time interval of existence of x is finite, but that there is no t' < t, where t is x's earliest instance of existence, such that x does not exist. Such a situation would violate criterion (ii) of the definition, yet WLC would still insist x has a beginning.
6:54 - 7:07 I am not convinced this is a coherent definition. What does it mean for x to bring about y? All this does is rename the object "cause" into the action "bring about," but no unique characterization of the action with this name is being given. Thus, it actually defines nothing. And, so far, all it describes is a relationship between x and y, but the parameters of the relationship remain unstated.
7:18 - 7:35 I acknowledge that the controversy is there, and that defining what "causation" is metaphysically is so difficult that there is no consensus. But that is still a problem we cannot just let slide. By going with the "intuitive" understanding, we are walking right down the path WLC wants us to, and that is itself part of the fallacy in WLC's argument: it lies in the fact that his terms for causation are all ill-defined. This is where the appeal to intuition fallacy kicks in. So we really should not just grant him an intuitive understanding, and commit to an actual definition of causation, regardless of how much controversy it may cause. Besides, in my view, I disagree that this should be so controversial at all. I think the only reason behind any essential disagreements on the definition is mere pettiness.
To be continued in the replies...
2
-
2
-
2
-
2