Lev Muishkin wrote:ReliStuPhD wrote:
So far, I am entirely unimpressed by your Philosophy 101 course. That, or you just didn't pay attention in class.
What an empty and disgraceful travesty of an answer.
You missed the only question of importance. Just like a person of faith to fail to see the obvious.Tell me what did you fail to understand by this?
Now you're resorting to misrepresenting my responses? Let's get the context right:
Lev: "It's obvious enough here that my Philosophy 101 trumps your prospective RelSt Ph.D. Unless you can demonstrate the viability of your argument."
Me: "
Insofar as my first premise is a generally-accepted principle and my second premise appeals to an accepted scientific theory, I believe I have. 3 is the conclusion that follows from 1 & 2.
At this point, the burden is still on you to demonstrate how your objections hold, not simply state that you object.
So far, I am entirely unimpressed by your Philosophy 101 course. That, or you just didn't pay attention in class."
And in this case, you are behaving exactly like the person of faith you disdain. (And, fwiw, I'm not a person of faith. I'm quite the apostate. Too bad you never bothered to ask.)
Lev Muishkin wrote:So, let's imagine that your premises are true.
What makes you think that positing "god" as a cause does not transgress premise number 1?
And what makes you think the cause is best described by an ancient mythical entity?
Even when I accept your unfounded premises you fail to answer the most salient question that arise from your poor understanding of logic.
Please try harder - oh you don't have to - you are only doing bible school.[/quote]
At this point, it's clear you're not even reading my responses. If you were, you would have seen this:
ReliStuPhd wrote:I think here you're assuming that "god" began to exist, which is question-begging if you can't show it to be true. If we allow that non-contingency is logically necessary (I'm happy for you to show it's not), "god" is simply the theist's appellation for whatever is non-contingent. I'm hard-pressed to think of a mythical being who was not created, so they would all be contingent. If it'll help, I'm arguing from something like an Aristotelean position here, and not a Christian one, so don't take "god" to mean "the God of Christians." I would certainly not argue that all Christians understand "god" in a philosophically, logically, or even theologically robust sense. But as far as I know, we're not debating the existence of the Christian God here, just, well, "god." (That is, I'm open to the argument that YHWH or Allah are instantiations of the non-contingent "god," and therefore not provable by appeal to KCA or other such proofs.)
At this point, it's quite obvious to me that you're either unwilling or incapable of addressing the actual points. I spent some time crafting responses to your non-response objection to the KCA, despite the fact that you'd offered no support for you objection at all. You've focused on two points I already addressed and completely ignored the meat of my response: that you have to demonstrate how the premises I've advanced do not hold. And all of that is OK. I was hoping you'd be able to keep up, but it's clear you can't. You'd rather keep your objections to yourself rather than airing them here. It's a fairly common tactic when someone can't really rise to the occasion at hand. I've tried to show some respect by responding to your vacuous responses the best that I could, but I now see that was a mistake. Sad too, because I really was hoping you'd be able to bring something substantive to the table. Thankfully, Gingko, and Kayla to a lesser extent, filled that role.
The saddest thing in all of this? You don't seem to realize that by
not offering substantive objections to the KCA, you've effectively allowed it to stand. It would have been far better for you had you actually been able to point to the place where you showed this or that premise not to hold. Instead, your rebuttal of the KCA amounts to a single adjective: "unfounded." At this point, I doubt you even took Philosophy 101 and I
know that a bible college student would be better prepared to debate these points than you've shown yourself to be.
PS Thanks for showing the KCA holds by being unable to show it doesn't.
PPS If someone other than Lev is interested in continuing this, I'm definitely up for it.