The Philosophy Discussion Forum

And you don't get formal reasoning. Let's lay that aside for a moment. You can think you derived First Cause and I think you needed/had to use an axiom for it, but either way, let's say you have First Cause, which you can call God. Let's consider the attributes you think "God created the univer...

You are so far from the point, I don't know what to say. It's not "integers," but causal chains that are the issue. I showed you the mathematical evidence, I showed you the empirical confirmation...I even pointed out how your own ancestors illustrate the point, and you still didn't get it...

There is NO problem with "infinite regress" Yeah, sorry...there is. There's no such thing as an infinite regress of causes , because logically and mathematically, such a chain cannot ever start. It eternally lacks the prerequisite to begin. YES in the absence of a First Cause would mean &...

So he ought not to have any expectation that science is even doable. This is tiresome. Not relevant what you as a believer in some deity believe the materialist SHOULD believe. It is your religion suggesting that a non-believer would be lost. What is relevant is what the materialist believes. I hav...

Nobody "has difficulty" with the idea of infinity here. But we want to do so with logical and mathematical accuracy, not with errors. An infinite number of prerequisites means that there is no exhausting the prerequisites. Thus, the prerequisites are never fulfilled. It's called the "...

Zeno was here -Imp Quite so ....... IC does not seem to realize that the idea of there having to be a First Cause arose while philosophers still had difficulty with "infinity". But really should (for the moment) not treat "First Cause" as the hill to die on. Should go to the top...

There is no integer that does not have a predecessor. You're missing the point. It's not merely the absence of a predecessor (to use your word)...it's that THAT "predecessor" has to have a "predecessor" first, and then that "predecessor" has to have a "predecessor...

Hot radio made Roosevelt the nation's Daddy despite his policies. LOL --- FDR gets the credit, but the policies were not his (did not originate with him). Facing the national crisis of the Depression, he assembled a cabinet of "national unity", sort of (the "big business" Republ...

I guess I will have to start this off. It is common to go from "the One who was the first cause of the universe is God" to all sorts of statements about God. Things like "God is omniscient", "God is omnipotent", "God created the universe by intent", "God ...

And if you use the INTEGERS as place holders for cause and effect (X is the cause of Y equivalent to X is the predecessor of Y) you do NOT get the equivalent of a "first cause". There is no integer that does not have a predecessor. This is unlike the "natural numbers" where by ax...

By using the integers that way to map cause and effect, you would be demonstrating that there is no first cause. The opposite: that an infinite sequence of prerequisites cannot ever start. So we would not exist, if there were no First Cause. And causality itself would never have started. But it has...

The integers are representing a series of causes and effects. Integers by themselves or as merely themselves , don't have prerequisites: but every effect has a prerequisite cause. And we're using the integers to represent a sequence of causes and effects . So if "-1" is the cause, then &q...

You think that grains of sand will start moving without any external applied force?? That's weird. All the sand grains ARE moving about, bumping into each other. The energy per particle is not zero because the temperature is not absolute zero (that's what temperature is, a measure of energy per par...

Apparently you have never encountered cosmologies that have no start. Guess again. But I've showed you that they're all simply wrong. It cannot be the case. It's irrational to believe it. You even gave mathematics as an example, ignoring that while there is a "starting point" for the natu...

Many of us believe the material universe was the creation of an uncaused deity. That there had to be a first cause, thus a creator, and that there need not be more than one, so one is the minimalist assumption. BUT -- how do we get from JUST that to "creation was by the INTENT of this deity&quo...