Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:55 am
uwot wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2017 7:19 pmWell, if I can paraphrase WC (Ha! Maybe there is a god.), his argument is that:
Everything that has a beginning, has a cause.
The universe had a beginning.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
If something like the above is how you understand WC's take on the cosmological argument, it falls at the first hurdle. There is no logically necessary connection between 'beginning' and 'cause'. You can state it as a scientific hypothesis, and believe it all you will, but it is not a sound logical premise.
I think the first premise certainly is a sound premise...
Really? So what is the logical connection between 'beginning' and 'cause'?
Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:55 am...but I think what you're saying is that it's not a valid premise, and for something like this, there honestly may be no real difference. There are a
few different reasons why craig believes the first premise holds true.
WLC wrote:The first one is, that it is a kind of first principle of metaphysics that something cannot come from nothing; out of nothing nothing comes.
Being "a kind of principle of metaphysics" doesn't make it true.
WLC wrote:Aristotle put it that being only arises from being, it doesn't come from non-being. And I think that this is a metaphysical truth that we do intuit rationally when we think about it.
As I said above; it is a scientific hypothesis. The fact that WLC wishes it were true to support his argument, has nothing to do with whether it is actually the case.
WLC wrote:Now I think that the questioner doesn't understand, perhaps, what philosophers mean when they talk about intuition. It's not like women's intuition, some sort of mysterious feeling or something; rather this would be a way of knowing some sort of a truth that is so basic, it's so primitive, that it is grasped as evidently true without needing to provide some deeper proof of it.
Good grief. With apologies to women, what Craig is describing is exactly like "women's intuition".
WLC wrote:Examples would include, for example, the truths of logic: p implies q; p; therefore q.
To find an ontological truth as foundational as abstract logical premises has been the dream of rationalists since Parmenides. His own 'Being is', is one of only two examples that fit the bill; the other is 'thinking is', which we can extract from Descartes. That this approach appeals to religious thinkers is precisely because it avoids the inconvenient fact that there is no empirical data that supports the intuition 'My god is real.'
WLC wrote:...it's not that you can prove it but it just seems evident.
Therefore, it isn't sound.
WLC wrote:And I would say in the same way when you think about the metaphysical principle that something cannot come from nothing, that seems to me to just be evidently true. And I don't think that this is idiosyncratic to me; on the contrary this is one of the oldest principles of metaphysics, Kevin, that has been recognized since the time of ancient Greek philosophy right up through the present day, so that I stand well within the mainstream of philosophical thought in saying this
That's an appeal to authority, which Craig, if he knows his logic, will recognise as a fallacy. But then, he hasn't anywhere else to go, since he admits "that seems to me to just be evidently true."
Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:55 amSo when I say that there may well be no real difference between sound and valid in this case, is because craig believes it's true exactly because it seems intuitively true, likening the idea to how the law of thoughts are intuitively true.
What you intuit, depends on your intuition.
Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:55 amHis other reasons for the premise are:
And what Prior and Edwards pointed out is this: if something can come into being without a cause then why doesn't just anything and everything come into being without a cause?
That is just hopeless logic. If it is true that one thing can come into existence without a cause, it doesn't follow that "just anything and everything" can.
Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:55 amIt's something to note that WLC has an interpretation of quantum mechanics that the particles created by the quantum field comes from elsewhere.
Not from the quantum field then?
Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:55 amIt honestly doesn't matter to the argument if there was; He think it's impossible for something to be eternal in the traditional sense of having an infinite past, and that only a being could cause in timelessness. I explained why in my first post. If there was something before the big bang, the same thing is just posited for that.
Indeed, but that still doesn't prove 'Everything that has a beginning, has a cause'.