Show me where it is unsound.
When I described āan infinite distanceā which is where you quoted me, it was an adjective.
Oh please!! WLC merely renamed the whole shebang an āargumentā instead of a āPrincipleā for the title of his publication to delineate it from the Islamic classic.
Understand this, the Christian church had no references to Aristotle until the Muslims reconnected them with his works in the 12th century. Aristotleās empirical writings were considered pagan heresy and they were destroyed was part of the ongoing indiscriminate purge the Christians carried out after 325AD.
The Islamic academics studied Aristotle intensely and wrote many books, criticisms, and assessments on his works. One of them introduced the name Kalam Cosmological.
If you are going to study philosophy be sure to study its history.
Dude. Show some maturity and sophistication. This is a philosophical dialogue, not a trolling session.
Argument 2 if you care to read my first response.
Bruh - where is my trolling???
Lol.
1 Like
This is actually just false. Augustine quoted Aristotle extensively in the fifth century.
David Killlens,
You wrote:
Which leads to the important question: what caused the big bang?
The honest answer is āWE DO NOT KNOWā.
Anyone who can prove the cause of the big bang will definitely receive the Nobel prize, and become incredibly rich and famous.
Well, since the Natural Universe is all that exists, the tiny bit of matter/energy that exploded and whatever made it explode were both within the Natural Universe, assuming they werenāt The Natural Universe.
What was the thing that triggered The Big Bang? You are right. Who knows? Definitely not a Supernatural God.
The universe cannot have existed at a point which is an infinite distance of time in the past, and have travelled through time all the way across that infinity to the present. For if something is an infinite distance across, there is no way to cross it. Therefore that point an infinite distance of time in the past cannot exist and the universe was never there. Ergo, the universe has a finite history.
Note I have used infinity as an adjective and a noun here. I mean actual infinities, not potential infinities, and not contained infinities.
Please actually try to understand what I mean. It is a difficult concept to communicate.
On what basis can you assert that?
I stand corrected not all Aristotleās work was destroyed. What survived were considered Platonic in nature. The West had limited access to Aristotleās works. Augustine mentions only having read the Categories and seems to have adopted ideas and knowledge of other titles through reading other writers.
None the less, Aristotleās Physics and Metaphysics and many others did not become available in the West until the 12th century, preserved and delivered by the Muslims. This reconnection in part set off events that led to the Reformation and the Age of Reason.
I do not see how time can be analogised to distance. So . . .
@ Raskolnikov {If the universe exists at Point in Time X
And If Point in Time Y exists an infinite distance into the future}
These points you make, Raskolnikov, are incoherent to me. Maybe rephrase to . . .
[ If the universe exists at Point in Time X
And If Point in Time Y exists an infinite time span into the future]
But you have to be careful, because time is not an intuitive concept. In theoretical physics, we can have time running in reverse, and in real word physics, the rate of passage of time is not the same in all frames of reference. And at around the Big Bang, the concept of time breaks down. It may be that we will discover something about time, which is new, and entirely non-intuitive, (our brains are not equipped to make ordinary every-day sense of it). Furthermore, what you are saying here is that the universe will end in some kind of strange event, and time and all of this universe, (or current state or phase of this universe), will cease, because it canāt go on forever. I do not see how you could have any evidence of this.
That leads me to observe that on the points in ARGUMENT 2, there is a paucity of actual evidence to support the claims. When arguments are what are employed to try to āproveā āGodā, then it seems that evidence must be scarce, if not non-existent. Otherwise give the evidence for the claims instead of trying to ARGUE them into existence.
Time and time-past may be quite non-intuitive, and the Big Bang may be part of something bigger. Perhaps a multiverse offshoot. The idea of a multiverse is considered seriously by some scientists. If something like that exists, then the theology we have been presented with, is way off the mark. Even if one might object that a multiverse theory implies an infinity of universes, and thatās impossible ~ even a limited finite number of other universes, doesnāt tie up with any theology thus far presented.
@ Raskolnikov { Most people accept that the universe had a beginning. This shouldnāt be a hot debate }
Maybe so, but it could be that the current universe, in its current state or phase, had a beginning, but that it arose from something about which we do not yet have much real idea. You might say that in the face of uncertainty, that I ought not to raise such possibilities, (as I do in this reply). In that case, I think that the conclusion: āWe donāt know the answers to these questionsā, is better than stumping up an argument which implies that you do know.
Also Iām not convinced by a time-past cannot be infinite argument. From any point in speculated time-past, the NOW can be reached. In other words, if we assume time-past is infinite, (ie. has no beginning), then it would be impossible to find a particular time in the past, from which the NOW could not, in principle, be reached, It would be incoherent to say that if you go back to the beginning of an infinite past, the NOW could not be reached. With infinite time-past, there is No Beginning to go back to, and no beginning to postulate as being that point in time-past, from which the NOW cannot be reached.
Iām planning to watch a series of videos all about the seemingly non-intuitive topic of āWhat happened before the Big Bang?ā
Cheers,
Mutorc
Noā¦ It is not read that way for the simple fact that you āplaced itā āatā (specific) an infinite distance. āInfinite does not describe unlimited or unmeasurable distance as in the case of itās use as an adjective but rather states the actual distance as āinfiniteā because of the word 'At.ā Itās like saying, āAt an 18 foot distance.ā 25 feet is the distance. You created a noun phrase. Infinite is the modifier and distance is the head noun. āinfinite distanceā is āthe actual distance.ā This is why I called you on an equivocation fallacy. Perhaps it can be worded differently. There is ānoā (At) a pronoun indicating a specific place, (infinite) a word denoting no specific time or place. You appear to be alternating between colloquial usage and scientific usage as well. This just makes for confusion. All I am saying is that clarity is needed. Obviously you did not convey what you intended to convey. Try again.
And lets not go through all the BS again. The universe, as we know it, exists in time and space. There is no evidence for the existence of nothing. You can not assert a mathematical nothing or philosophical nothing and impose it onto the nothing of space, science and cosmology. This would be an equivocation fallacy.
1 Like
Greetings, Encogitationer!
Perhaps rather than all physical things, all things having dimension would be a better definition. For space, lacking physicality in a sense, still has dimensions.
So I understand, time is the fourth dimension, so, again, it is part of the Natural Universe.
I do not believe that actually does follow. Say I measure dogsā heights with units of cat-tail lengths. Are cat-tail lengths therefore something which should be included in the nature of dogs?
If humans designated cat-tail lengths as units of measure, then, yes, that measure is in the nature of dogs. Recall, a foot measure of length, width, and height was a convention determined often by the length of a kingās foot.
I think time is an attribute of physicality, but not only that. I think more that it is a measurement of change.
If so, then the Natural Universe still contains all time, since the Natural Universe contains all matter/energy that changes forms.
I think it could also apply to God, who is non-physical.
I would not call God outside of the universe, rather I would say the universe is in a sense āwithin God.ā For without God, it would not exist. Nothing is outside of the universe. Being non-physical, as God, means having no location. He is not āoutsideā the universe, nor is he inside it. Those are the wrong terms and the wrong way to think about it.
You are assuming the existence of the very God you are supposed to be proving, which is a Begging the Question/Circular Reasoning Fallacy.
I also disagree with you assertion that the Natural Universe is everything that exists. I believe I have shown the necessity for something other than it to exist, with the consequence of that being false being the necessity of infinity or something coming from nothing.
Uh, no, you have not demonstrated the necessity of something outside the Natural Universe, nor have you demonstrated that the Natural Universe needs a cause.
There is also not a way to prove a negative such as ānothing but the universe existsā unless you define the universe as everything that could possibly exist. However, you have not defined it as that. You have defined it as physical matter/energy and the space inbetween. I would agree with that definition, but it does not follow from that that therefore a non-physical entity cannot exist, or that that is all that exists.
Uh, I did define the Natural Universe as everything that exists and it includes matter/energy, space and time. I did not phrase it as a negative to prove. And if this is everything that exists, then, yes, that precludes the existence of a Supernatural God.
I do not agree that all time is within the universe. I do not quite understand your argument there, or if I do, I donāt think it comes close to being sound.
You keep saying āI believeā and āI do not agreeā as if it makes a difference in what is true or false. It does not.
Does my refinement of that definition satisfy you? Is there anywhere else my argument might fall apart?
It fell apart from the first premise about the Universe and the Laws of Logic you cited helped it fall apart further.
P.S. Thank you for being civil! Quite a few people here are not.
I canāt rationally be mean to someone Iāve never met, but that same rationality demands that I point out false premises and logical fallacies in your arguments. Please come correct and try harder next time.
1 Like
Raskolnikov,
You wrote:
Aristotle was the father of biology, studied sleep, he wrote the taxonomy system (kingdom, phylum, class, etc) that we use today, he studied physics and planetary motion.
If you like science, you would like Aristotle. He was, first and foremost, a scientist.
All of this about Aristotle is correct. However, Like Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius said with an anvil on his head, even a genius can have an off-day, and Aristotle had his off-day on the olā Cosmic G-Thang. False premises are false premises and fallacies are fallacies, no matter who espouses them.
1 Like
Raskolnikov and Grinseed,
It would be more accurate to say that the works of Aristotle and other Classical Greek philosophers exist despite Christianity and Islam rather than because of them.
Both Christians and Muslims burned the books at the Alexandria Library in Egypt at different points in history, as well as burned books they deemed heretical anywhere else. Who knows how much knowledge and wisdom was lost because of lunatics who think their pet āholy booksā are all they need?
Agreed Encog. There still remains a little serendipitous aspect in that the West had retained acceptable works of Aristotle, limited in availability and not entirely reprehensible to church tastes to be burned as heretical, which made the arrival of his Physics and Metaphysics more palatable later.
Grinseed,
Another interesting note is that according to Ex-Muslim scholar and author āIbn Warraq,ā the greatest minds of the āGolden Age of IslamāāAbu Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ar Razr, Omar Khayyam, and othersāwere all Skeptics and Freethinkers, not Muslims, often hated and scorned by the Islamic societies from whence they came.
1 Like
Other universes that prove your definition is not correct?