Comments by "MC116" (@angelmendez-rivera351) on "Rationality Rules"
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This entire video is a non-starter. It grants WLC's claim that the causal principle is confirmed by our experience, but even this is not true. In fact, the causal principle, as stated by WLC, is completely misconceived: it is conceptually mistaken. Why? Because WLC's metaphysics of causation relies on Aristotelian physics, and an Aristotelian understanding of causation, where (0) causes can be discretely categorized into formal cause, final cause, material cause, and efficient cause; (1) objects and phenomena can be discretely categorized into causes and effects. Our modern understanding of physics and the scientific method reveals that Aristotelianism is false, and as such, WLC's principle of causation could not possibly be true. It is not compatible with the scientific understanding of causation that we have today. Causation delineates spatio-temporal relationships between objects and phenomena across spacetime, and so it exists as a spectrum. Therefore, there is no coherent notion of discrete categorization into causes and effects. There is also no coherent notion of causes being discretely categorized into types, as such. Instead, any statement of scientific causation must include a discussion of geodesics and worldlines, and an ontology that accounts for locally Minkowski spacetime. Any hypothesis that you present as the explanation of some body of evidence must meet these criteria before even being considered a coherent hypothesis. On that note, any ontological notion of beginning to exist must also be defined in such a way that the definition is congruent with these ontological considerations. This should be the starting point for any honest individual discussing causation today.
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@logicalliberty132 No, those are definitely mistakes of the video, and your response is completely incorrect too.
20:20 - 20:41 "Two things can be said in response to this example. First, we know that some kinds of quarks, which are, as far as we currently know, not composed of simpler things, can turn into other kinds of quarks. This doesn't seem to be a case of already existent things being re-arranged to form a new composite; instead, it's a case of a fundamental particle beginning to exist."
This is exactly what the video claimed, and it is simply incorrect. Quark decay is in fact an example of a rearrangement: it is an interaction where energy in the quark field is lowered and redistributed into the neutrino field. Nothing here is beginning to exist in a sense other than as a re-arrangement of energy states of quantum fields.
20:42 - 20:51 "Many composite objects aren't merely arrangements of pre-existing things. For instance, I exist, but I am not identical to an arrangement of a particular group of particles."
This is incorrect. True, I am not a particular arrangement of a group of particles, but I never said I was. I am still a composite object that is merely an arrangement of wordlines of particles throughout spacetime.
Also, you claimed I said that the video claimed that I am composed of atoms, but that is actually not what I said. Read my previous comment again.
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contingent things by definition don't exist in some possible worlds
I know that, and I never said otherwise, but the issue is the notion of what counts as a possible world. I believe the concept of possible world is ill-defined.
in our world cars exist, but in some other possible world humans maybe did not invent cars
Except you do not know that it could have been possible. Conceivability and possibility are not the same thing.
thus the essence of a car is combines with it's existence to form the whole
No. Again, that is not how that works. You can try to convince me otherwise, but as long as you appeal to false concepts, I will keep pointing it out.
nothing in the definition of causal loops of causality implies they are time dependent
Then you do not understand the definition of causality.
Alexander Pruss' work which you have not refuted demonstrates this with Paradoxes that are time independent.
I never said anything about time-dependent paradoxes. You are getting different parts of my response mixed up together. I do not have the time to provide a thorough refutation of everything that Alexander Pruss has written, it would take dozens of pages, and it would be impossible to type in a YouTube conversation, not to mention that constructing a well-written response would literally take weeks. That being said, many philosophers have written rebuttals of Pruss' works. So I have no obligation to provide my own refutations. I am justified in simply rejecting his works on the basis of those refutations. You can insist otherwise, but you are wasting your time.
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This is an excellent objection, but the real problem for Benny's argument is simply that the universe is not random. The universe is deterministic. When we throw a die, since it is a chaotic system, under usual circumstances, we lack sufficiently precise information about the initial conditions of the throw to determine accurately the trajectory of the die, and thus, to predict the outcome of the throw. This is why we use probability theory to model a throw of a die as a stochastic process. However, in principle, if you can program a dice-throwing machine with sufficiently precise control of the motion of the throw, you would be able to accurately predict the outcome of every throw, despite the throw still looking like a random motion to a human not equipped with the mathematics to make this prediction. Therefore, making an appeal to randomness, which does not actually occur in nature, as an analogy to demonstrate that the universe is designed, is hopelessly fallacious.
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@DoofusChungus I don't even know what Answers in Genesis, but I'm just saying that it not only makes sense in a religious context, it makes sense in a science context.
I have already demonstrated how fine-tuning is false if classical theism is true, but fine-tuning makes even less sense in a scientific context. There is no fine-tuning, scientifically speaking. The claim that the constants of the universe could have been different at all is unfalsifiable. The claim that life could not have existed in a universe with different values of the constants is unfalsifiable. The claim that the universe would have even had any constants at all, if it had been different, is unfalsifiable. The claim that the constants taking on the values that they did is highly improbable, if random, is also unfalsifiable, since we do not know how these variables are distributed: they could be uniformly distributed, which is what Christian apologists assume, but this assumption is unjustified, and unfalsifiable. They could also be normally distributed, Poisson distributed, discretely distributed, or any other probability distribution imaginable. In short: it is scientifically impossible (or otherwise) to know what the universe could have been like if it were any different than what it is.
My point is that these 1 in a gazillion chances happen over and over.
These events do not have a 1 in a Gazillion chance. The universe is, by all acounts of the available evidence, deterministic (quantum deterministic). So,... no, these events do not have a probability of 1 in a Gazillion. They have a probability of 1.... in whatever way it is even meaningful to actually say that. This, of course, assumes that all events can be meaningfully assigned a probability, which we know is mathematically false.
Do you believe aliens are real?
I choose to withhold my judgment about the existence of aliens, as I do not think we have sufficient evidence to make a conclusion in favor, or against, their existence. Some form of extraterrestrial life probably does exist somewhere in the universe, but it being intelligent enough for us to call it "aliens" is an entirely different subject. We do not even have a sufficiently rigorous understanding of what it means for life to be intelligent here on Earth, so we are definitely not ready to make those judgments for non-Earthly life.
The possibilities and outcomes are virtually infinite, no?
If you mean possibilities in the sense of randomness, then, no, since the universe is definitely not random. If you mean possibilities in the sense of possible states of the universe, that depends entirely on knowledge we can never have: things such as the size of the total universe, its topology, the initial conditions of the universe, if there even exists such a thing as initial conditions of the universe, etc. Anyhow, there is no scenario where we are justified in concluding that the space of possibilities is infinite.
Not only the perfect set of events, but so improbable that this sequence of events will never happen again.
This assumes there is no multiverse, which no one knows to be true (or false). Also, again: the universe is not random. Events have probability of 1. Events happened, because the way the universe behaves means they had to happen. It would have been impossible for the universe to behave the way our current laws of physics say it does behave as, and yet for those events to not have happened.
When there are 100 zillion events that are required to occur just so life on Earth can exist at all,...
The events are not random. You do not believe they are random, because you believe God is guiding these events. We do not believe they are random, because we believe these events are a consequence of the physical and deterministic nature of the universe. Thus, no one in this conversation believes these events are random. So, why do you keep throwing this strawman as an objection?
...then it didn't just randomly happen by pure chance!
I agree! Which makes me all the more confused as to why you keep saying the events are random. Virtually no biologist thinks life emerged from random events. No, we think life emerged via organic chemistry. And, I do not know if you have ever taken a course in chemistry, but let me just say this: chemistry is not random. If it were random, then there would not exist such a thing as "the laws of chemistry." If you throw a sodium coin into a fountain of water, what is the probability that it will react with the water, release energy, and form hydroge gas with sodium hydroxide? The probability is exactly 1. It will happen (well, in Earthly conditions, anyway). It is impossible for it to not happen, and we have verified this experimentally so many times, the number of experiments is probably in the millions by now. Not only can we say for certain it will happen, we can predict the speed of the reactions, the amount of particles that will interact, the amount of energy released, and the amount of hydrogen gas molecules that will be produced, and more: and we can do all of this with such high accuracy, it would make you cry tears of joy. Chemistry is not random, and neither is biology. Therefore, unless there exists such a thing as the soul, all life can be reduced to the chemical reactions it undergoes. Therefore, the origin of life is described by some sequence of chemical reactions, by all accounts of the evidence. Do we know which sequence of chemical reactions? Not yet, no, but we are getting closed every year.
Anyway, in conclusion: (A) since God is all-powerful, there is no fine-tuning, because there being fine-tuning, by definition, implies God is limited by physical constraints, and simply making the creative choice to make a physical compatible universe/life combination is not an example of fine-tuning, because that is not how the concept of fine-tuning has ever been defined. (B) Science does not claim that events in the universe are random, so you need to stop insisting that they are.
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@DoofusChungus How do you know he wouldn't?
I never claimed to know that. And the point is, neither should you, or anyone else, since such a claim is unknowable. You are the one who made the claim that you know God would, so the burden is on you to provide evidence.
Yet my argument isn't baseless, as if he creates the universe with rules, he created those rules for a reason.
How do you know God had some reason in mind when creating the universe? Did you ask Them if They had a reason to do so?
So, what would be the point in going back on those rules?
Oh my Siesta. Are you illiterate? No one is arguing that God should go back! That is not the point of the argument. Stop making this strawman already.
"Even if theism is true" yet "I never even argued that God doesn't exist."
Again, are you illiterate? Saying "Even if theism is true" is not the same as arguing against theism.
You also even called yourself a non-theist.
I did. I am a non-theist. But that does not mean I argued against the existence of God. The only thing I have actually argued here is that the fine-tuning argument, as presented in favor of classical monotheism, is unsound. That does not prove God does not exist, nor does it approve all other apologetic arguments are unsound. We can have a discussion about those other apologetic arguments, but I doubt you wany to. Also, lacking a belief in God is not the same as having a belief in the nonexistence of God. Those are very different things.
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@DoofusChungus Brain waves basically refer to oscillations in the electromagnetic activity fields in the brain, these fields emerging from the fact that there is a net electron flow between neurons to exchange information. Electromagnetic fields are physical. They are a primary topic of study in physics, and we have characterized them mathematically.
Physicalism, in a nutshell, makes the claim that everything is physical: in the sense that, for whatever systems we can conclude exist via the study of physical theory, the systems they are causally related to are also physical, meaning that they too can be subjected studied via a physical theory. Basically, physicalism is a revamped version of materialism, but more modern, and meant to account for how modern physics describes the universe, rather than just naively asserting "everything is matter," since we know this to not be true.
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@DoofusChungus But you call yourself a physicalist, which is a belief that everything is in the physical (at least from what I've read online).
Yes.
So you very much have a belief in the nonexistence of God,...
I do, but I have never argued in favor of this belief, and yet, you are pretending that I did. And, what do we call it someone pretends that someone else did something, and yet they did not do it? Want to take a guess?
...and you're also arguing against many things about God, not just finely tuned.
No, I really have not said anything about God, other than that, if God is omnipotent, then the fine-tuning argument's premises are false. I have not made any other arguments about God. I do not know where you get that from. Maybe you are confusing my claims with the claims of someone else.
Also, side note, I don't know if there's an actual definition for the term finely tuned religion-wise, but what I mean by it, is that the universe has specific scenarios that had to play out for us to exist.
If you assume a godless universe, then yes, it is true that a very specific sequence of events had to happen for us to exist. This is not true if God exists, though.
So it's "finely tuned" so that those scenarios did play out, and here we are.
No, that is now fine-tuning works. Yes, IF God does not exist, or if God is not omnipotent, THEN, the fact that we are here necessitates that a certain sequence of events have happened. This is true, simply because if God is not omnipotent, then physical constraints matter. However, if God is omnipotent, then there is no sequence of events that "had to happen" for us to exist.
My point for that first one is that we both can go back and forth about "you don't know that" and "how do you know?"
Yes, and my point is that the fact that neither you nor I can know whether God would have wanted a particular outcome or not defeats your argument.
Everything played out as it did. Everything happened to such a degree that here we are, so obviously, there's a plan going on.
No. The fact that things happened the way they happened does not at all demonstrate that there is a plan.
And being all knowing, even if he didn't create the universe with a reason in mind, being an omnipotent God, he knows what's going to happen, or I guess in his case, how to make it happen.
Yes, per classical monotheism, God does know what will happen. This does not mean that God has a plan. It also does not mean God actually cares about what will happen. Look, I could, hypothetically, grant you the existence of God, and you still would not be able to prove anything else about God, at all, much less prove that Christianity is true. And if I grant you that God exists, I can still debunk the notion of fine-tuning, because the notion of fine-tuning in direct, definitional contradiction, with the omnipotence of God.
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@x-popone6817 because nothing would be able to happen if it was eternal.
False. "Eternal" is not synonymous with "timeless" or "changeless".
So you continue with your unfounded accusations that I am dishonest?
The accusations are not unfounded. I explained the accusations, and other did before me too.
It's your religion,... to call someone "dishonest".
The fact that you think a frequent retort makes a stance a religion proves that you do not understand what a religion is.
I literally just did explain it.
No, you did not, you simply provided a false claim that someone else debunked before Ant even replied. The fact that you pretend otherwise actually further proves your dishonesty.
God isn't a set of events, which is what the problem is with an infinite regress.
This does not actually explain what is it that makes an infinite regress problematic.
Scientists are biased as well...
Here, you demonstrate your ignorance of science. Scientists are biased, but the scientific method is not.
An infinite regress isn't possible because then we would never reach this point,...
No, the latter does not follow from the former. ω is an ordinal number infinitely larger than 0, but yet it is well-defined.
unless, of course, the past, present, and future are all equally really, and we just live in some type of block in time at different "locations", but that seems counter-intuitive.
It is counter intuitive, but that is how time actually works. We have known this for 106 years now, thanks to Einstein's theory of general relativity.
No one casually thinks that's how time works.
False. That is precisely how physicists and cosmologists think time works.
Faith is not, by definition, belief in the absence of evidence.
Yes, it is. Your Bible literally says so.
The Biblical definition of faith is trust,...
No, it is not, and you will not be able to find a Biblical verse that defines it as such.
then the implications of that conclusion lead to a mind.
They do not.
Yes, you don't know what dishonest means.
Projection much.
An infinite regress is impossible.
An assumption with no evidence, not a fact.
Something from nothing is impossible.
An assumption with no evidence, not a fact.
Conclusion: the universe had a beginning.
This literally does not follow from the previous two sentences, and depending on how you define "beginning", it can be the case that this conclusion is contradicted by the previous two sentences.
This leads to a mind behind it.
An assumption with no evidence, not a fact.
refute this.
There is nothing to refute, as your claims are all baseless assertions.
A natural explanation wouldn't work because how can an impersonal force suddenly, randomly, create the universe?
This is an example of the argument from ignorance fallacy. Your ignorant self is unable to imagine or understand how quantum physics, which are themselves beyond your own understanding, can lead to the universe existing as it is. Therefore, you deny the possibility altogether, but it does nothing to actually disprove said possibility. Things can be possible, regardless of whether you understand how they can be possible, or not.
The problem with an infinite regress is that we wouldn't be able to reach the present.
You have not explained how is it that we would not be able to reach the present.
Time exists outside of the physical world
No, it is not. Time is one of the four axis of spacetime, and spacetime is part of the physical world.
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@x-popone6817 No, it's not an argument from ignorance. Quantum mechanics does not show that something can come from nothing, nor does it should that the effect of an impersonal force, shouldn't be permanent.
Unbelievable. You went as far as to misrepresent your own argument in order to also misrepresent mine. Yet you complain when we accuse you of dishonesty. At this point, I find it hard to believe that you are not just trolling me.
The paragraph in which you mentioned the point to which I replied by appealing to quantum physics is completely different from the paragraph in which you mentioned your "something cannot come from nothing" claim, which I also replied to separately. So I have no idea why you are pretending that my appeal to quantum physics was in response to your "something cannot come from nothing" claim, and at this point, I do not care to know why. When you have to lie this much in a conversation, it just demonstrates without the shadow of a doubt that your position is indefensible, and that you are just desperate, and that there is no point in trying to continue have a conversation with you on the subject. Frankly, you have defeated yourself.
My argument was philosophical, that it isn't possible for an eternal cause to suddenly have an effect that hasn't been permanent.
No, it was not. That was an entirely different paragraph altogether, which I had already addressed. Your argument was, and I quote your exact words: "A natural explanation wouldn't work because how can an impersonal force suddenly, randomly, create the universe?" I find it amusing that you are lying about what your argument is, despite the fact that your actual written argument is still not only part of your comment, but part of the exact words I quoted in my previous response. Here I am quoting them again. Those exact words constitute an argument from ignorance, whether you want to admit it or not. Why do they constitute an argument from ignorance? Because you asked "how could (this) be possible?", (this) referring to an impersonal force suddenly and randomly creating the universe. The fact that you asked this is precisely what makes it, definitionally, an argument from ignorance. There are more than a dozen of plausible naturalistic explanations for the hypothetical beginning of the universe, in the assumption that such a beginning did exist. You are apparently, personally not acquainted with them, because they are highly technical explanations that require more than just a degree in quantum physics to suitably understand. As such, you are unable to imagine a plausible naturalistic explanation, so you rhetorically ask, "how can that be possible?", as if trying to drive home the point that, "of course it is not possible, for if it were possible, I would be able to imagine it, and then I would not need to ask how". In other words: it is an argument from incredulity, and an argument from incredulity is a special case of an argument from ignorance, as incredulity is a consequence of ignorance. So, yes, it is an argument from ignorance, and no, it has nothing to do with your false claim that "the eternal impersonal cause caused a non-eternal effect" is a logical contradiction, which I already addressed elsewhere.
Science can't disprove logic. Science presupposes logic.
I never stated otherwise here. The issue here is that you have not been using logic at all. You have not provided me with a sound syllogism. You have provided me with claims that you have not proven, terminology with no definitions, and then you expect me to either take your word on those claims, or you simple reiterate the claims, saying "well, this is obviously true, how can you not see that?" rather than, well, actually explaining the damn claim and proving it. You arguments have all been non sequiturs, misrepresentations of my responses, or an argument from incredulity. Nothing about that is logical.
Finally, your comments seem kind of like ad hominem. You say quantum mechanics is beyond my understanding. In other words, that I couldn't understand it even if I tried and studied it, that I don't have the mental capacity.
Firstly, let me go ahead and admit that I made a mistake. The phrasing "beyond your understanding" was very poor and careless. I apologize. I definitely intended to communicate the point that it was beyond your current understanding, but by trying to be concise in my words, I just made that into an insult. Secondly, now onto actually addressing the argument at hand. No, saying quantum theory is beyond your understanding is not an ad hominem. At worst, it is just rude. It would have been an ad hominem if I had said "your ignorance in quantum mechanics falsifies your conclusion", but I never actually said such a thing. Besides, in saying that it is an ad hominem by putting the claim out of context, not only do you misrepresent the claim, but you also miss the point of the argument.
You also said I am dishonest, without any proper basis.
No, I definitely provided more than just a proper basis. Not only did I explain exactly in what ways have you been dishonest and how exactly those things qualify you as dishonest, I also have provided explicitly examples along my commentary of such dishonest shenanigans, and have made sure to individually call those moments out in my responses. I quoted exact words, too. I am completely justified in calling you dishonest. Of course, you say otherwise, but guess what: a dishonest person would never admit to being dishonest. So you are only making your case worse here.
Speaking of dishonesty, I spent way more time in this comment correcting your misrepresentations of my arguments than I spent actually discussing any logic or philosophy, which is honestly disappointing. Conversations like that are not productive, frustrating, and a waste of time. They are not even entertaining. Now that I know exactly what you are all about in this conversation, I am going to be prudent and stop reading your replies, and stop replying to your replies. There is no point in discussing anything else further with you, and I have more important things to do with my energy than continuing to get baffled by this tomfoolery. Farewell.
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@angelbrother1238 I would say that fine-tuning is a real problem.
If so, then you should cite several peer-reviewed studies that prove the claims being made by Ben Shapiro here. The problem is that I know you cannot do it, because such studies do not exist, because Ben Shapiro's claim is false.
This is why the physicists that disagree with this have to posit a multiverse.
No, this is false. To start with, the idea of the existence of a multiverse in physics is much, much older than the idea of fine-tuning in theistic apologetics, dating back to the early days of quantum mechanics. Also, the existence of the multiverse is not a hypothesis endorsed by most physicists or cosmologists, it is a minority position, and not the consensus. In particular, the multiverse hypothesis is only considered as an actual prospect in string theoretic research, which is itself just the study of a particular hypothesis that we are not yet able to test experimentally.
The problem is that even with that, you need to deal with an ultimate beginning.
This assumes that the universe had a beginning, which is an assumption I have no reason to grant.
Then you have the problem with explaining consciousness, and with that, near death experiences.
Explaining consciousness itself? Yes, but near death experiences are fairly well-explained now in the neuroscience research. It is to the extent that we can actually induce the sensation of a near-death experience by applying certain stimuli to the brain, all without any of the near-death stuff actually happening to the person. Also, there are many studies that have served as strong evidence that the no actual out-of-body experiences are happening with patients who feel them happen. Take for example Parnia, S.; Waller, D. G.; Yeates, R.; Fenwick, P. (2001-02-01). "A qualitative and quantitative study of the incidence, features and aetiology of near death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors". Resuscitation. 48 (2): 149–156. or French, Christopher C. (2005-01-01). "Near-death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors". The Boundaries of Consciousness: Neurobiology and Neuropathology. Progress in Brain Research. Vol. 150. pp. 351–367. or UK Clinical Trials Gateway. Primary Trial ID Number 17129, entitled "AWARE II (AWAreness during REsuscitation) A Multi-Centre Observational Study of the Relationship between the Quality of Brain Resuscitation and Consciousness, Neurological, Functional and Cognitive Outcomes following Cardiac Arrest". or Greyson, Bruce (2014). "Chapter 12: Near-Death Experiences". In Cardeña, Etzel; Lynn, Steven Jay; Krippner, Stanley (eds.). Varieties of anomalous experience : examining the scientific evidence (Second ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. pp. 333–367.
As for the stimuli that induce near-death experiences, consider Van Gordon, William; Shonin, Edo; Dunn, Thomas J.; Sheffield, David; Garcia-Campayo, Javier; Griffiths, Mark D. (2018-12-01). "Meditation-Induced Near-Death Experiences: a 3-Year Longitudinal Study". Mindfulness. 9 (6): 1794–1806. or Vincent, Jean-Louis (2009). "Towards a Neuro-scientific Explanation of Near-death Experiences?". Intensive Care Medicine. [S.l.]: Springer New York. pp. 961–968. or Judson, I. R; Wiltshaw, E. (1983). "A near-death experience". Lancet. 322 (8349): 561–562. or Martial, C; Cassol, H; Charland-Verville, V; Pallavicini, C; Sanz, C; Zamberlan, F; Vivot, RM; Erowid, F; Erowid, E; Laureys, S; Greyson, B; Tagliazucchi, E (March 2019). "Neurochemical models of near-death experiences: A large-scale study based on the semantic similarity of written reports". Consciousness and Cognition. Consider also “There is nothing paranormal about near-death experiences: how neuroscience can explain seeing bright lights, meeting the dead, or being convinced you are one of them” by Dean Mobbs and Caroline Watt, 17 August 2011, Trends of Cognitive Sciences. At the end of the day, we do not know everything that there is to know, and the research will continue for all of the foreseeable future regardless, but the scientific explanations are there.
As for explaining consciousness, we are actually much closer to explaining the fundamental aspects than you realize. However, I also want to point out that this is irrelevant. The fact is, a worldview has no obligation to explain the origin of consciousness, or the origin of anything, for that matter. Having explanations for the phenomena that we observe is desirable, yes, but the only obligation a worldview has is that the assertion that it makes actually be sufficiently justified and correspond to reality. Not having an explanation to a particular phenomenon is perfectly acceptable. Saying "I don't know" as the answer to a question is perfectly acceptable, and in fact, there will never be a point in existence when we will know everything that could possibly be known. Saying "I don't know" is not giving up. Saying "I don't know" is literally the first step in acquiring the knowledge and in solving problems with that knowledge.
Like I said, atheists are entertaining. I should know, I used to be an atheist...
Atheists are indeed entertaining. This is why I have atheist friends I enjoy spending time with. If they were not entertaining, then I would not spend time with them.
...until a huge miracle happened in my life.
I would love to hear your story.
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@angelbrother1238 Again, you are trying to fit your emotionally based opinion into the argument.
This is just a baseless assertion.
You can also say that God designing life this way makes it even more rare and precious.
There are two things to say to this:
(A) In the assumption that what you asserted is true, that still would not mean the universe is designed for life. It is entirely possible that God designed the universe to create black holes - something that the universe is actually really good at doing - and that the existence of life is only a by-product that God nevertheless found acceptable, as it does nothing to interfere with God's holy plan about black holes. In fact, even if God did design the universe, it still follows logically that the universe is not finely-tuned, and it does not have to be in order for life to be valuable. Most physicists and cosmologists who are religious will tell you this, an most religious people have no idea what "fine-tuning" is anyway, nor is it relevant to their beliefs.
(B) I have no reason to think that this makes life more valuable. To the contrary: most "theories of value" would render life less valuable in this fashion. The theory of value that the real world seems to operate by is the supply-demand theory: the more accessible a supply with fixed demand is, the less valuable it is, and the less accessible a supply with fixed demand is, the more valuable it is. As it currently stands, life exists on only a finite supply. Even in the assumption that life exists elsewhere in the universe, it is clear that life is extremely, extremely rare in the universe: less than 0.001% is inhabitable. However, if God is invested in creating life, then life becomes an infinite supply. Yes, it is still rare for life to exist in the universe, but only because God decided this would be true during these times. In actuality, the access to the existence of life becomes trivial if God can create life at will and is willing to do so. Hence, in whatever form there exists any demand for life, the supply has increased infinitely, so its value has decreased likewise. Besides, if you postulate the existence of an eternal afterlife, this also decreases the value of life. This is because life is valuable almost entirely due to the fact that death is an inevitable part of it. This means that every second we spend alive is precious and counts. Every second you spend with someone counts, every second you devote to the improvement of humanity counts. If an eternal afterlife exists, then being alive here on Earth no longer has any value of any kind. Well, maybe it has value to God, but most definitely not to us. The reason humans appreciate life so much is precisely because it is delicate, feeble, can easily evanesce.
The better question is what emotional event caused you to not want God to exist.
There was no such event. In fact, even for a few years after I deconstructed my Christian faith, I still felt anguish, because I did not want to abandon the religion. I wanted to believe, but found myself in pain when I realized that, if I take a close look at the evidence, the beliefs become completely untenable. To be clear, I no longer feel this way. I am completely at peace with my lack of religiousity, and the quality of my life has improved significantly since then. All I am saying is that, even after I stopped believing God exists, I still had continued wanting to believe God exists. There was never a point when I said "I wish God does not exist." As for why I stopped believing, there was a myriad of factors. I cannot deny that there were no emotional events that happened that affected my ability to believe, but ultimately, what had the most impact in my ability to believe was obtaining an education in science, philosophy, and religion. I have become acquainted with many religions, and I have started investigating all the ones I studied more deeply, including Christianity, my own religion, and the more I investigated, the more problems there were. Getting a better education in science and philosophy also helped me stop taking many deeply-ingrained ideas that Christian spokespeople inject into you for granted, and started questioning more deeply.
Irrationality rules is someone that would bend his beliefs and convictions when he is socially ostracized.
This is a baseless accusation, and the only thing it proves is that you lack any arguments to present against his points, so you have to resort to insulting his character instead. How extremely emotionally mature of you.
We both know this
Nope, not at all.
This guy is basically making money off his sheep viewers.
Sheep viewers? I have a degree in physics, and another in philosophy. And there are many things I disagree with, when it comes to Rationality Rules. In fact, in one of his videos in against the Kalam series, I heavily criticized the video, having an entire thread dedicated to that. I still ultimately agree with his overall conclusion that the Kalam argument is a bad argument, but that particular video was not a good one.
But again, you seem to have to resort to insulting his viewers, because you actually have no arguments to present against the points being presented. This is pretty pathetic, if you ask me. Every sentence in your comment decreases my opinion of your emotional maturity. So, if you actually have any arguments to present, then I suggest you lead your next reply with those, and omit the insults. Otherwise, I will just dismiss you as an Internet troll.
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despite the Earth's significantly quicker than Saturn, both have made the same number of orbits
This is not an absurdity, but in reality, mathematically correct, and justified by transfinite set theory, which was developed by Georg Cantor in the late 19th century. Since an orbit is a discrete object, of which there can be an exact integer amount, it is a counter, and therefore, in an infinite period, there can only be Aleph(0) orbits. Aleph(0) is a cardinal number that satisfies the property that that Aleph(0) = n·Aleph(0), where n is any natural number. So yes, Saturn would have made Aleph(0) orbits, and Earth would have made 30·Aleph(0) orbits, but both quantities are equal. This is because if I consider the sets N and 30·N, there actually exists a (trivial) bijection between the sets. This is all, just to say that, if al-Ghazali had been born after Georg Cantor, al-Ghazali would have been acquainted with set theory, and would have never created the Kalam cosmological argument to begin with. The entire premise behind the argument, the so-called "absurdity", is false, because there is no absurdity.
The use of the causal principle is not to be found here, for Kindi's arguments are based simply on the notion of the succession of temporal segments.
The fact that WLC wrote this betrays his lack of understanding of the scientific ideas of time and causation. For starters, his argument would need to be rephrased, as it is well-established today that it is not time that passes, but that our time coordinate changes based on our innate spacetime motion. Even if we applied this rephrasing, though, there is still the conceptual problem that time and causation are inherently linked. In fact, causation in science today is understood in full-rigor by way of equations in the calculus of time scales.
But the problems raised by the illustrations are real ones, for they raise the question of whether an infinite number or number of things can actually exist in reality.
This is an entirely valid question to ask, but the problem lies in the approach to answering the question, not the question itself. It is in the approach that al-Ghazali is wrong.
Ghazali argues that this results in all sorts of absurdities; therefore, the series of temporal phenomena cannot regress infinitely.
Ghazali did argue this, but he presented these arguments during a time when mathematics did not stand on a rigorous foundation, and the concept of infinity was very poorly understood and controversial. His assertion that, the Earth cannot have orbited the same amount of times as Saturn, yet also have orbited 30 times as many orbits as Saturn has, is an absurdity... such an assertion is completely unsubstantiated, and stemmed from a very naïve and incomplete understanding of infinite quantities. There is no absurdity here. If anyone in the year 2021 is trying to use the concept of finitude and infinitude to present a syllogism, then their concepts better be grounded on axiomatic set theory, or on type theory, not on intuition.
Infinite quantities or magnitudes are those that are measurable but have no finite measure.
This is a fine definition, although it does have the problem that the definition is only coherent if you also define what "finite measure" means. Later, you mention that an infinite measure is greater than the measure of any finite number, but this still requires having to define "finite" in some way or other. This is not a big issue for the video series as a whole, but I certainly think many people would find it very helpful for "finite" to be defined in a way that is unambiguous, precise, and not overly reliant on intuition, since it would help parse out justifications for arguments concerning the finite and the infinite more easily.
For instance, there are just as many natural numbers as there are [nonnegative] even numbers, despite the fact that the [nonnegative] even numbers are a proper subset of the natural numbers.
This is true, and this is exactly what Ghazali failed to understand when he presented his arguments about the infinitude of time... which is understandable, since Cantor's development of set theory did not exist during his time. There was no possible way for Ghazali, or any of his contemporaries, for that matter, to understand that he was wrong, or why he was wrong. Nonetheless, this does not change the fact that he was indeed wrong, and theologians today need to start acknowledging this.
*A potential infinite is, strictly speaking, not an infinite at all. It is a quantity that 1. is increasing 2. has no finite limit 3. is always finite.
I find this to be a really strange and confusing way of defining a potential infinite, especially when followed by the central caption on screen that talks about lack of definiteness, itself not a well-defined concept. Now, I imagine that when you speak of a quantity that is increasing, you therefore talk about a quantity that we call a variable. So the potential infinite refers not to a set of objects, but simply to a variable, and this variable has the property of always increasing, and the property of always being finite. However, what makes this confusing is the second property: that it has no finite limit. The word limit seems to be used here with a rather loose and intuitive definition, which is not adequate for the explanation, since we are dealing with a precise mathematical idea and making appeals to set theory. When I hear the word "limit", what I think of is the topological concept of a limit point, or equivalently, the idea of limits that is taught in an introductory calculus course. In other words, a potential infinite is a quantity that can take on various values, and is monotonically increasing, but while the set of values the variable takes on is infinite, the values themselves are finite, and bounded. So in other words, this definition, at least to me, communicates the idea that a potential infinite is a variable that converges as its argument increases without bounds. If this is what you intended to communicate with your definition, then all is good, but otherwise, clarification is certainly needed here. I say this, because the following caption only makes this worse.
A potential infinite collection is one "in which the members are not definite in number but may be increased without limit".
This is WLC's definition. I find this to be, at the very least, nonsensical. Ignoring the fact that I have never seen any mathematical text that even makes reference to this kind of "infinity", the fact that "the members are not definite in number but may be increased without limit" is problematic. For starters, in axiomatic set theory, there does not exist any notion of a set not having a definite, fixed cardinality. Perhaps what WLC is talking about here is a sequence of sets, in which the next set in the sequence has a cardinality bigger than the last, yet every set in the sequence has finite cardinality, and the limit point of the sequence is a set with infinite cardinality. However, if that is what he is referring to, then the definition is useless and redundant, because it makes no meaningful, non-trivial distinction between actual infinities and potential infinities: in this case, every potential infinity necessarily gives rise to an actual infinity, so every infinity is both actual and potential. This is why I said clarification is needed. Honestly, what this proves to me is that the theologians' uninformed attempt at trying to make such a distinction in the first place is mathematically unsound and philosophically misguided. I have never seen a definition of potential infinity that is not redundant or nonsensical.
After having looked at the video's coverage of stage 1 of the New Kalam, I also must say that it does disappoint that none of the resources that theologians have provided that I could find on the subject have bothered to provide a scientifically rigorous definition of a "cause" and an "effect". This does make any arguments that attempt to use such a notion fall completely flat on their face, since, if there is no coherent causation to discuss, then there is no cause of the universe that needs to be discussed. In modern science, the universe is studied by way of understanding it states and how those states evolve. These evolutions are described by time-scale equations, and so the idea of causation is not even present: scientifically speaking, there is no such a thing as a cause or an effect, there is only a special kind of mutual dependence between states and variables, called functional dependence.
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Also, talking about the actual definitions:
Defining 'existence': existence is easy to define if you choose the appropriate framework with which to define it. Existence is properly defined by axioms in free logic. All ontology, when formalized, should be presented in free logic.
Defining 'begins to exist': the definition provided on screen is problematic for many reasons. It fails to define what "x exists at time t" means, and while I know that existence itself is already presuably defined here, "at time t" is not defined, because formal ontologies, as defined in free logic, do not use any notion of temporal dependence. Temporal logic, as an extension of free logic, is needed here, but the best way to achieve this, actually, is instead to formalize the concept of a parametric family of ontologies: for each t, one has an ontology O(t), and "x exists at t" if and only if "x exists," in the sense of free logic, is true in O(t). However, this also requires defining what time is, and for this, we need to recur to mathematical foundations of the general theory of relativity, which I contend, no expert philosopher alive is currently equipped to do, undermining the entire argument. This brings me to the other objection to this definition: the idea of "earliest temporal boundary," which is simply ill-defined here, even in cases for objects which have a finite age. You see, the time axis can only be coherently conceptualized (that we know of) as a connected subset of the real numbers, i.e., an interval of real numbers. However, there exists open intervals. For instance, the open interval (0, 1) has a finite length, but there is no smallest real number in this interval: for all s in (0, 1), there exists some t in (0, 1), such that t < s. In the sense of topology, this interval has a boundary, but it does not contain said boundary, and if we are using this to model the physical world, there is nothing indicating that such a boundary actually exists. So, even for objects of finite age, talking about "begins to exist" is problematic using this definition. One amendment I can suggest is to say that "x begins to exist at t" if and only if "x exists at t, and for all t' < t, x does (did) not exist at t'." However, this definition would present problems for WLC's worldview, and I am certain he would not be able to accept this definition, despite his complete inability to propose an alternative. I myself cannot think of a better alternative, though.
Defining 'universe': I think it is simpler to define "universe" as the totality of all the different spacetime manifolds that may exist, all quantum fields that may exist, and all mereological sums thereof, as well as possibly strings, if they do exist. Dark matter and dark energy would be included in the above.
There is an ambiguity as to what "whatever" or "everything" means in premise A of the argument. When it says "Everything which begins to exist..." does it refer to the universal quantifier, "For all x,...," or is it referring to a specific kind of thing, like mereological sums of states of quantum fields?
Defining 'cause': the definition of 'cause' in the video is wholly inadequate for anything: it is just not even really a definition. "x causes y just in case x produces or brings about y" is not a definition, as the relation "x produces y" is itself undefined. All the people writing this did was rename the relation, rather than actually define it. Also, we absolutely DO need to worry about the questions dismissed in the video, as those are essential for having an appropriate definition of 'cause.'
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I think it's a good thing that there's no objective morality. We as a society decide what's moral and what's not.
No, society does not decide that. This whole "morality is objective" vs "morality is not objective" discussion is stupid, and also, dangerous. Ultimately, when it all comes down to it, the way people evaluate whether an action is moral or not is based on what they believe the consequences of those actions to be, regardless of whether those beliefs are scientifically accurate or not. We can measure suffering, scientifically. However, this measurement necessarily must respect the confessions of the people being affected by those actions. If the person claims to be suffering, then they probably are (unless you can categorically demonstrate that they are lying). No one else gets to make the decision on whether that given individual is suffering or not. Society as a whole does not get make this decision. Society does not decide whether some particular action causes suffering or not, to those affected by it. The "society decides" thinking is extremely dangerous, and it is how we got things like chattel slavery, colonization, and the Crusades.
This involves us as individual parts of the society and thus makes each of us responsible to hold up these moral values (as in a democracy).
Nope. The "democracy" idea is very dangerous. Again, this is how we got chattel slavery in the U.S.A. Democracy might be great for doing politics, but certainly not for making judgments of moral value.
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@barnaclejones822 The problem, in my eyes, is trying to appeal to an authority that already excludes what you're positing.
It does not exclude such a thing, and I am not even sure you actually know what it is am positing. Actually, you definitely do not know, because I never even clarified what it is I am positing. All you are doing right now is playing games, pretending you can read my mind, when the only thing I did was respond to an erroneous argument you presented.
You just have to concede that America & its history is not some bastion of liberal democracy.
Oh, I agree completely, but not at all for the reasons you think I would agree. I am the opposite end of the spectrum of where you are.
I never claimed it was an inherently religious document, my claim was that it was written under religious assumptions with the intent to be applied only to a moral and religious people.
And this claim is factually incorrect, as has been pointed out to you by multiple people. Also, what the intent was is completely irrelevant to this discussion, and completely irrelevant, in particular, to what OP said.
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