Immanuel Can wrote:wtf wrote:I've seen Craig's phrasing and it's always seemed a little off to me. What does "begin to exist" mean? For one thing it seems very binary.
It is. But some things are genuinely binary. As they say, "You can't be 'a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead.'"
I can think of counterexamples. Some people think you exist as long as your in the minds and hearts of others. Isaac Newton lives in present time, through his work and his influence on the world. That's part of the model of a probability wave of existing. First your parents imagine their future kid (or try to prevent it). Either way they're thinking of you before you are even born. So existence can indeed be viewed as a fuzzy wave, not a discrete event.
Secondly, there are philosophical problems. You have a big oak tree outside your window. When did it start to exist? When it first sprouted above the ground? When it was an acorn that fell from some other oak tree? But when did that oak tree start to exist? Trace it all the way back, and the oak tree "began to exist" at the moment of the big bang. The quarks and strings and whatever that we're all made of were formed there. So you tell me, when did the oak tree "begin to exist?"
So that's two challenges to your binary idea of existence right there. If you want to posit binary existence
that is a hidden assumption in your argument.
Immanuel Can wrote:
A thing "exists" or it does not.
I define wtf's number as the length of the shortest Turing machine that generates a proof of the Riemann hypothesis. Does the wtf number exist?
Immanuel Can wrote:
If it "exists" a little bit, then it "exists." If it does not, then it does not at all. That's simply definitional of what it means to say a thing "exists" at all. It's also basic logic, as first explained to us by Aristotle.
You are making an assumption. Nothing wrong with that. But in philosophical arguments it's helpful to acknowledge the assumptions you're making. As far as old Aristotle, an appeal to authority will not help you here.
Immanuel Can wrote:
No, I would say not. And in fact, not just Aristotle but every logician afterwards thinks so. Without the distinctive meaning of the idea of "existence" no predications at all are possible.
Oh but now you have pulled a rhetorical trick. We were talking about whether a thing can sensibly said to "begin to exist." And now you are talking about the binary nature of existence. I can agree with you that an oak tree either does or does not exist outside your window. But I challenge you to tell me the exact moment when it "began to exist." That's Craig's phrase, and we see that it hides many philosophical difficulties.
Immanuel Can wrote:
At least three things. First, the absolute certainty that an infinite regress of causes is impossible.
Refuted by the negative integers. But why do you say an uncaused cause has existed forever, but that an infinite regress of causes is impossible? It seems that these are miracles on a par. There's no logical basis to accept one and reject the other.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Once we know that pretending things can start to happen without causes, we know that such a chain must begin somewhere.
Why? The uncaused cause didn't begin anywhere? Why does God get a get-out-of-cause-free card?
Immanuel Can wrote:
Secondly, we do seem to know some things that appear to exist independent of the contingent, time-bound, empirical world. Numbers seem to be one of those things. "2" is still "2" at all times and places (no matter what symbol we use for it, whether 2 or the Roman number II, or .. or whatever).
Now that is VERY funny. A post or two back you were pretending not to understand the negative integers, and NOW suddenly you are all about the wonderful abstractions of math.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Thirdly, we can observe empirically that the universe is not infinitely old.
The part of the universe we observe is called the observable universe. We don't know anything about the part of the universe we can't observe, or if such a thing even exists. But surely you are not going to claim that historically contingent empirical observations can be used to prove things with finality in science. I truly hope you misspoke yourself and don't actually believe that. If your theory of a finite universe is based on empirical considerations it's subject to refutation with tomorrow's experimental news.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Entropy, even at an extremely slow rate...say only 1/1,000,000th of its' actual, measurable rate today...would mean that in an infinite universe, we would have attained heat death an infinite amount of time ago. Likewise, we can observe things like the Red Shift Effect that demonstrate our universe is linear and expanding, not cyclical or contracting. So the scientific observations we have square with a "caused" universe.
Yes but you yourself are promoting an uncaused universe. God cause the universe but God was uncaused. So really, the universe is uncaused. Because the first cause has always been there, forever. Surely causality is transitive. God was uncaused, God caused the universe, hence the universe is uncaused.
How can you claim to believe in cause when you are the one claiming there's an uncaused cause? You want it both ways, you want to say that there's no infinite regress of causes but there is a magic uncaused cause. To me both of those seem equally mysterious.
Immanuel Can wrote:
That'll do for now, I'm sure. I'm glad, though, that we've broken through to the key point. Thanks for your thoughts.
We have broken through, but only to shed light on the hidden assumptions and philosophical problems of Craig's argument. You're welcome for my thoughts
Thanks for yours too.
