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melidere
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« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2011, 10:28:49 AM » |
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Wanna start up again? Has anyone ever heard R.C. Sproul's explanation of the Cosmological Argument for the existence of some sort of god? Basically it's the assertion that nature indicates the existence of something self-existent and eternal, based on the arguments that 1. Something exists now, and 2. That which exists now must necessarily owe its existence to something self-existent and eternal, because the alternatives do not hold up to scrutiny. The alternatives are that a. the universe is self-created (which is analytically invalid and formally absurd, because for something to create itself, it would have to exist and not exist at the same time in the same way, which violates the Law of Non-Contradiction; in other words, it would have to exist before it creates itself into being) and b. the universe itself is self-existent and eternal, which all of empirical data contradicts, since scientific data point to a beginning for all that we know within the universe. And although some may object that "we just haven't found the evidence yet for that which does not have a beginning," this is an argument that requires faith rather than (and contrary to) the evidence, for if something IS found which is without beginning, it is qualitatively and ontologically different than the universe and by no definition can be considered part of the universe; since it existed before the universe, it is formally absurd to believe that it could both be (without beginning) and not be (as part of the universe that was about to be created) at the same time in the same way. And although others may object that the universe (as self-existent and eternal) is greater than the sum of its (created and temporal) parts, just as a painting is greater than the sum of its paints, this is mere equivocation on the word "greater." While at first "greater" was referring to the quantity of time that the universe has existed, in the analogy the word "greater" is used to portray the qualitative value of the universe. If you don't change the meaning of the word "greater," the analogy doesn't hold up, since the total amount of paint in the painting does not add up to more than the sum amount of the daubs of paint used to create the painting. And although others may object that the universe, though made of finite parts, is made up of an infinite number of finite parts and is therefore itself infinite, this argument again breaks down to equivocation, since first we are talking about how the universe is arranged chronologically but then we switch to arguing about how the universe is arranged spatially. If we continue talking about how the universe is arranged chronologically, we run into the problem that, in any given sequence, there must be a "part number 1" - in this case, the first part to have existed. Since we are arguing that the universe goes on infinitely, this "part number 1" must have a. created itself (formally absurd) OR b. self-existed eternally (in which case it's not a finite part and this argument contradicts itself), OR c. it was created by something other than the parts of the universe; something that IS self-existent and eternal. So as we look at where that which exists now came from, we see that a. it was not self-created AND b. it is not itself self-existent and eternal and therefore must owe its existence to something other than itself which IS self-existent and eternal.
As a side note, those that argue that the universe was caused by chance plus time are arguing nonsense, since CHANCE itself is not a causative force but rather a relationship between things that already exist, describing possibilities that can't be determined with certainty since the variables are too complex to compute or are unknown to us. Technically, these people are arguing for the universe's self-creation, which we have discussed before and dismissed as a formally absurd contradiction of logic.
Again, this just proves that there logically must be some sort of god, not that any specific god exists. I do not claim that this argument proves that the Christian God exists. I'm just ruling out atheism and agnosticism. Unless you can provide another alternative to how that which exists came to be. Or prove that nothing exists (in which case I would argue that your argument - for proving that nothing exists - doesn't exist either).
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