The First Cause

[3DOP]

Ok I will make it simple.

There is no one answer. It depends on how you look at it.

You are like one of my kids- Daddy why is the sky blue?

(oxygen molecule explanation)

But why is the sky blue?

(water reflection explanation)

But why is the sky blue?

(definitional explanation- we define that color "blue")

But why is the sky blue daddy?

Because God made it that way. That one always shuts them up.

It's easy to ask the same question over and over.

As you point out, we have to discern what information it is that a questioner wants. One can always deliberately go running off the wrong direction and say true things that are irrelevant to the questioner whenever we are asked a simply worded why question. But I don't see how that invalidates any particular question regarding cause. A good daddy will try to get at the root of what the child is wondering about and impart some kind of satisfactory information. It seems like you are trying to deny cause merely because questions can be phrased, and usually are, with an imprecision that makes it easy to go down a rabbit trail. Even so, you are responding with at least secondary causes. But with regards to things, the question isn't about every secondary cause, but about a prime cause upon which the secondary causes are only contingent. The reason that your last answer always shuts them up, is because they sense that you can't go any further than that. "God made it that way." THAT is the first cause.

You also spoke against the statement "Everything that begins to exist has a cause."

You objected that this presupposes things which begin to exist. I think most of us are comfortable with such a relatively unexamined presupposition. Any argument that proposes that there are no things that begin to exist seems like sophistry to me. But even if it is an unwarranted presupposition, could you be willing to accept a formula which proposes that "If anything begins to exist, it has a cause"? If so, it seems like you guys could then concentrate on proofs for and against "anything that begins to exist". You didn't seem to like Feser. I guess what I liked was that rather than trying to prove the beginning of the existence of the universe, he proposed that we could begin with the beginning of the existence of...his left shoe...or some such thing. Oops, begging the question by calling a left shoe a thing?

---------------------------------------------------------------

So anyway...to participants on both sides. Thanks for the spirited and mostly intelligible exchange (Not too hard...thanks for the simple stuff. Blue sky, left shoes, and parked cars are part of my experience). Oh no! I just made bukowski's argument! I take it back. Kidding Thanks again to you all. I hope you all can keep going without getting irritated or frustrated with each other.

3DOP

[ERayR]

As you point out, we have to discern what information it is that a questioner wants. One can always deliberately go running off the wrong direction and say true things that are irrelevant to the questioner whenever we are asked a simply worded why question. But I don't see how that invalidates any particular question regarding cause. A good daddy will try to get at the root of what the child is wondering about and impart some kind of satisfactory information. It seems like you are trying to deny cause merely because questions can be phrased, and usually are, with an imprecision that makes it easy to go down a rabbit trail. Even so, you are responding with at least secondary causes. But with regards to things, the question isn't about every secondary cause, but about a prime cause upon which the secondary causes are only contingent. The reason that your last answer always shuts them up, is because they sense that you can't go any further than that. "God made it that way." THAT is the first cause.

You also spoke against the statement "Everything that begins to exist has a cause."

Oh no anything that begins to exist has a cause. But there are some things that had no beginning and by definition if it had no beginning it can have no cause. That which has always been can not be caused.

You objected that this presupposes things which begin to exist. I think most of us are comfortable with such a relatively unexamined presupposition. Any argument that proposes that there are no things that begin to exist seems like sophistry to me. But even if it is an unwarranted presupposition, could you be willing to accept a formula which proposes that "If anything begins to exist, it has a cause"? If so, it seems like you guys could then concentrate on proofs for and against "anything that begins to exist".

First we must come to an agreement as to what it is that begins to exist.

You didn't seem to like Feser. I guess what I liked was that rather than trying to prove the beginning of the existence of the universe, he proposed that we could begin with the beginning of the existence of...his left shoe...or some such thing. Oops, begging the question by calling a left shoe a thing?

The beginning of the existence of what? Some things have had a beginning, some have not.

---------------------------------------------------------------

So anyway...to participants on both sides. Thanks for the spirited and mostly intelligible exchange (Not too hard...thanks for the simple stuff. Blue sky, left shoes, and parked cars are part of my experience). Oh no! I just made bukowski's argument! I take it back. Kidding Thanks again to you all. I hope you all can keep going without getting irritated or frustrated with each other.

3DOP

[mfbukowski]

I think most of us are comfortable with such a relatively unexamined presupposition.

Yep

That's precisely the problem!

[elguanteloko]

ERayR:

Nor are you. Am I required to justify and you are not?

I already told you that you can't have an infinite regress because it makes no sense. Go back to the turtle analogy. Does it make sense to you that the world would be "supported" by an infinite regression of turtles one over the other? I also said that asking what the cause is isn't the same as asking for a "purpose" which is what mf was talking about but I wasn't. Furthermore, it is clear that you don't get these reasons nor have you thought about what you believe carefully enough since it is incoherent. Let me explain below.

Take some time to understand what I am saying. Infinity (eternity) has no first cause. Quessting Beast expressed it even if (s)he doesn't seem to understand what (s)he said: "Quite simply, we cannot know why there is Existence instead of NOTHING" Take some time to meditate on infinity.

I'm not even saying I know why there exists something rather than nothing but I'm only presenting a side of the story (a side I don't actually support, btw, but your misunderstanding of the issue is appalling). It is clear that you still refuse to read on the issue since you don't even get that Craig, for example, isn't talking about what was before the Big Bang since there was not space and time. He is talking about how space and time themselves began to exist. Yet again, you choose to remain ignorant so that's your problem. Kind of sad if you ask me.

Take a minute and reread mfbukowski's post above. Read it until you understand it. Asking why presupposes ther is a why. Infinity presupposes there is no why.

LOL No, that is not what infinity presupposes. Infinity, as you are using it, implies an infinite regression of causes, NOT no-cause. Do you get that or not?

[elguanteloko]

ERayR

How can you give reasons for something that can't be? Again I ask you to meditate on the concept of infinity. The concept of infinity leaves no room for a first anything and I believe is universally accepted as being real. It even has its own symbol.

Except that an infinite regress is real. Refresh your mathmatical concepts.

Oh, man, your misunderstanding is even more profound that I thought. We aren't talking about mathematical infinity but an actual infinite regression.... yes, they are different. To express things like "1 car, 2 cars, 3 cars...and so on to infinity" does NOT mean there are an infinite amount of actual cars, man. Heaven help us!

[elguanteloko]

Ok I will make it simple.

There is no one answer. It depends on how you look at it.

You are like one of my kids- Daddy why is the sky blue?

(oxygen molecule explanation)

But why is the sky blue?

(water reflection explanation)

But why is the sky blue?

(definitional explanation- we define that color "blue")

But why is the sky blue daddy?

Because God made it that way. That one always shuts them up.

It's easy to ask the same question over and over.

How does this show my question isn't a valid one? It doesn't. Try again.

[elguanteloko]

Ok well I appreciate you providing this video instead of the Feser articles. I will be glad to take on this point of view since my little brain is not too taxed with Feser's terminology. I hate having to wade through that- but now I see the problem.

First let me say that I am definitely on the side of the guys getting laughed at in this video.

The good news is that if someone here as a LDS thinks they are defeated by the atheist position being ridiculed on the video think again. The fact that atheists take this position does not mean that THEY are right- or that they themselves do not misunderstand that indeed it needs to be a theist position.

What the atheists do not understand is the brilliance of the LDS position. They don't understand that since God is a man, one can take what they see as a "humanist/atheist" position and turn it into a perfect LDS position.

There is nothing to "fear" in the idea that human experience is all we can know, and that humans create reality WHEN GOD IS A HUMAN. In fact, what this does is turn 99% of atheist arguments on their head- I know because I was one.

I kept my philosophical positions intact and went from atheism to Mormonism with the simple revelation that God is Man/ Man is God. I essentially "worshiped" man by believing that we invented- and were- our own gods and what we found best in life were projections of our own evolved social values and that what we called "god" was really worshiping our own "best standards" and elevating them by imagination into positions of authority- that our "creation" of our personal/social worlds were in fact what we saw as god creating the world- those dumb religious people!

By an incredible spiritual experience, I saw that in fact I was right philosophically (of course you may and probably do differ with that one!)but what I did not understand that God WAS INDEED REAL and also WAS INDEED A MAN - so it turned on its head what I saw those "stupid religious people" saying. It turns out that they misunderstood the philosophy (in my opinion-) and went with all this "First Cause" stuff- which totally did not fit the idea that God is a Man.

So anyway, that is why I am here, and why I plan on taking this as far as I can.

iiiiiiiiiirrelevant

So now, back to Craig!

Here is the whole problem imo with this whole point of view:

"Everything that begins to exist has a cause."

It's a question-begging definition! It presumes that there are "Things" which "Begin to exist" from the way the question is phrased- just like the "what color is virtue" question.

LOL Of course it presupposes that there are things which being to exist since that is what it states. To say that "There exists an entity on the internet named mfbukowsky" presupposes what it states and so does ANY proposition. This answer is just ridiculous, mf.

It also presumes there are "things" which ARE "causes"- and that the "cause" of an event is just not an adequate explanation of a human-defined "purpose" of the event in a human context.

Once again, we are talking about cause, not purpose. I don't get how you can mix those two. There was not purpose in part of anyone in the virus killing ten people but the virus still killed 10 people and caused the death of those 10 people.

As I said earlier, every "cause" is nothing more or less an explanation which fits a given human-defined purpose in language- in communication- which fits a given purpose.

...and so does ANY word you use. Congratulations, you've gone nowhere.

To presume that every "Thing" has a "Cause" is like presuming that the world is made of billiard balls which are knocking into eachother- "causing" "Things" to knock into other things- etc.

Is presuming that a virus caused a million deaths "like presuming that the world is made of billard balls which are knocking into each other-"causing" "Things" to knock into other things"? What a caricature of the position I'm explaining, mf.

In my way of thinking, all we can know is that we experience regularities in the universe- light enters our eyes, our brain forms a picture from that light, and by interacting with what our brain "sees" we can move "things" around (our perceptions of things) we can put things in our mouths, and keep living by eating them, we can throw things, sit on things, drive things and make complex machinery etc- but all we can know about those "things" is what our eyes and ears and taste buds and our fingers tell us about them.

It's things illusions we recall, we really don't know things at all.

All we can know is human experience. And no one can prove otherwise! Period. End of story. Make fun of "if a tree falls in the forest..." all you like, the reality is all we can know is human experience- and not just my experience- but the pool of human experience. Every scientific theory, every book written fiction or non fiction, every thought thought by anyone anywhere is based on human experience. We know Antarctica exists because someone went there and wrote a book, took a picture etc. But it is all part of human experience. No humans- no experience.

We can't know anything that someone has not experienced. And we can't know anything except what humans have said about their experiences. Language IS what we know- language doesn't mirror "what is" because all we can know is experience- if anything, language makes pictures of experiences- not about "What Is"

So for me, there are no "causes" there are "explanations" in a context.

The bridge collapsed. Why? (someone asks) In order to answer I need to know what context they want in their answer. If they are an engineer, I answer "When the bomb went off, the shrapnel cut the cables, and the bridge fell" He might protest: "But those cables were meant to withstand a force of xyz to the whatsis! That could not be the cause! Then the discussion continues from there- the engineer still does not have an "adequate explanation" and for him, does not know the "cause" yet.

Someone wondering why they are in traffic might ask- "Why is traffic so bad?" - "Because the bridge fell"- "Why did it fall?" Somebody blew it up!

The answer might be - "Oh c***!" I'm not getting home til midnight!" That much is an adequate "cause" for that individual to stop inquiry- he has the explanation he needs.

Someone else of an ecological bent may ask "Why did it collapse?" "Someone blew it up" "Oh my gosh- why would they do that?" "They were terrorists!" "What kind?" "They were ecologists and thought people should not be driving cars" Now comes a discussion of ecology

Psychological: Why did the terrorists do that? What was their motivation?

Bomb expert: What kind of device did they use? How did they trigger it?

The point is that we all see our own "causes" for what happened, because what we really want is an "adequate full explanation" to our own satisfaction.

What was the "cause" of Bin Laden getting killed? The bullet? The war? The towers falling? His one-time allegiance to the US causing resentment? His childhood? Many of us probably don't care and only notice it in passing because we have no choice. Others want to know every detail and can't get enough of it. Many who wanted every detail of the royal wedding may or may not care about Bin Laden or vice versa.

Different strokes for different folks- but that is what culture is. We all have input, we all create out little worlds out of it. There IS no one "cause" just as there is no one "adequate explanation" which fits every person or every situation.

I'm sorry but I literally laughed at this. You've fallen into the most disgusting logical positivist pit I've ever seen. What can I say? You are wrong on so many levels I can only recommend you to do more research into what logical positivism is and why it sucks.

[mfbukowski]

I'm sorry but I literally laughed at this. You've fallen into the most disgusting logical positivist pit I've ever seen. What can I say? You are wrong on so many levels I can only recommend you to do more research into what logical positivism is and why it sucks.

I am about as far from "logical positivism" as anyone can get.

You are not understanding a single word- and I really don't care who's "fault" that is.

I'm not even saying I know why there exists something rather than nothing but I'm only presenting a side of the story ...

How does this show my question isn't a valid one? It doesn't. Try again.

It's easy to ask the same question over and over.

Why don't you really tell us what you think?

Other people here seem to understand me just fine, but I have yet to see your position on anything.

Oh- and that thing about "purposes" vs "causes"?

I thought we were talking about God here. If you want to talk about viruses, that's a little different. Same problem, different words. Viruses don't kill people, one could say that heart failure kills people, caused by pneumonia, caused by swelling of the lungs caused by..... mutations in a pig in Asia, caused by solar flares, caused by....

But I guess you don't see the difference. Parts and wholes and all that, I suppose.

I'm about done.

[mfbukowski]

I wonder how Craig, as a theist explains the afterlife.

After all, if things like people can "begin to be" I suppose they stop being after they die?

When precisely do "I" "Begin" to exist? Do "I" exist at the union of sperm and ovum, or am "I" in those cells too?

When someone has Alzheimer's or is brain dead does his "I" still exist? When is it legal to pull the plug?

Nothing is clear about when "I" begin to exist- it is a matter of definition. Were that not so, abortion would be illegal and there would be no lawsuits about if the family has the right to "pull the plug" on comatose people.

When does a "chair" begin to exist? In the glimmer in the designer's eye? When the wood is in the tree? At the first cut of the saw? When someone first sits in it?

All these are arbitrary definitions.

He also says in that video that there is "no cosmological theory" which allows matter to continue "before" the big bang.

At least in my understanding, he is ignoring the possibility of the "big crunch".

All that is explodes into the Big Bang, exists for all the time it exists, then collapses back into a singularity, then re-explodes in another Big Bang.

Matter in, matter out. No creation ex-nihilo, no "first cause", just cosmic forces which are cyclical.

And to say that all this is due to "merelogical nihilism" is just plain wrong, if that is what he is saying. Very few accept it, and he is drawing a cartoon of it and holding it up as a strawman.

[Mordecai]

...You are not understanding a single word- and I really don't care who's "fault" that is.

So Elguantaloco is nitpicking, without knowing what you're saying? Yeah, never seen that before. It's obnoxious, isn't it?

[ERayR]

ERayR

Oh, man, your misunderstanding is even more profound that I thought. We aren't talking about mathematical infinity but an actual infinite regression.... yes, they are different. To express things like "1 car, 2 cars, 3 cars...and so on to infinity" does NOT mean there are an infinite amount of actual cars, man. Heaven help us!

OK back to the turtle on top of turtle on top of turtle. That is not what God or man being eteral is it is not one on top of the other but the same being stretching forever in both directions.

[elguanteloko]

OK back to the turtle on top of turtle on top of turtle. That is not what God or man being eteral is it is not one on top of the other but the same being stretching forever in both directions.

...we are talking about causes. Causes upon causes can't take you to an infinite regression.

[elguanteloko]

I am about as far from "logical positivism" as anyone can get.

You are not understanding a single word- and I really don't care who's "fault" that is.

Come on, mf. Read your own description of what we learn and how we learn. Seriously, I shouldn't have to explain this to you. You can say you are as far to LP as you want but your words are quite clear.

Why don't you really tell us what you think?

Other people here seem to understand me just fine, but I have yet to see your position on anything.

Here it is: I find the God explanation good for just about nothing. It is terribly unconvincing and foolish, IMO. I also don't take the concept of cause seriously but not because of Hume's arguments.

Oh- and that thing about "purposes" vs "causes"?

well, YOU are the one who switched from discussing causes to purpose. That was your fault, don't blame it on me. I mentioned it because you misunderstood and changed one for the other.

I thought we were talking about God here.

Not necessarily. We were talking about First Cause. That could or couldn't be God. If you noticed neither you nor I mentioned what the first cause might be.

If you want to talk about viruses, that's a little different. Same problem, different words. Viruses don't kill people, one could say that heart failure kills people, caused by pneumonia, caused by swelling of the lungs caused by..... mutations in a pig in Asia, caused by solar flares, caused by....

But I guess you don't see the difference. Parts and wholes and all that, I suppose.

It's actually pretty interesting that you mention that because I recently "became" an anti-reductionist. The difference exists but it isn't of relevance. If you can understand me using "wholes" then that's all we need. Breaking down the wholes and focus on the parts is really a whole different game and that's why you aren't getting it still. A thing and the sum of its parts aren't the same thing.

[elguanteloko]

I wonder how Craig, as a theist explains the afterlife.

After all, if things like people can "begin to be" I suppose they stop being after they die?

When precisely do "I" "Begin" to exist? Do "I" exist at the union of sperm and ovum, or am "I" in those cells too?

When someone has Alzheimer's or is brain dead does his "I" still exist? When is it legal to pull the plug?

Nothing is clear about when "I" begin to exist- it is a matter of definition. Were that not so, abortion would be illegal and there would be no lawsuits about if the family has the right to "pull the plug" on comatose people.

When does a "chair" begin to exist? In the glimmer in the designer's eye? When the wood is in the tree? At the first cut of the saw? When someone first sits in it?

All these are arbitrary definitions.

He also says in that video that there is "no cosmological theory" which allows matter to continue "before" the big bang.

At least in my understanding, he is ignoring the possibility of the "big crunch".

All that is explodes into the Big Bang, exists for all the time it exists, then collapses back into a singularity, then re-explodes in another Big Bang.

Matter in, matter out. No creation ex-nihilo, no "first cause", just cosmic forces which are cyclical.

And to say that all this is due to "merelogical nihilism" is just plain wrong, if that is what he is saying. Very few accept it, and he is drawing a cartoon of it and holding it up as a strawman.

Watch the video I posted. He talks a little bit about that. As far as definitions go, you need to understand what definitions are and why they aren't arbitrary but useful. Big difference.

[WalkerW]

Some of my thoughts on the "first cause" can be found in this thread.

[mfbukowski]

Watch the video I posted. He talks a little bit about that. As far as definitions go, you need to understand what definitions are and why they aren't arbitrary but useful. Big difference.

I was responding to the video. That's why I mentioned it.

I am a Pragmatist. Pragmatists don't get along with logical positivists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism#Anti-reification_of_concepts_and_theories

Underlining added

Pragmatism has enjoyed renewed attention since the 1960s, when a new analytic school of philosophy (W. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars) put forth a revised pragmatism criticizing the logical positivism dominant in the United States and Britain since the 1930s, while a new brand infused with themes from the analytic and other traditions, known sometimes as neopragmatism, gained influence spearheaded by the philosopher Richard Rorty, the most influential of the late 20th-century pragmatists. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict analytic tradition, and "neo-classical" pragmatism (such as Susan Haack) that adheres to the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey.....

Anti-reification of concepts and theories

Dewey, in The Quest For Certainty, criticized what he called "the philosophical fallacy": philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't realize that these are merely nominal concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems. This causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples are the "ultimate Being" of Hegelian philosophers, the belief in a "realm of value", the idea that logic, because it is an abstraction from concrete thought, has nothing to do with the act of concrete thinking, and so on. David L. Hildebrand sums up the problem: "Perceptual inattention to the specific functions comprising inquiry led realists and idealists alike to formulate accounts of knowledge that project the products of extensive abstraction back onto experience." (Hildebrand 2003)

Sound familiar? That is exactly what I am arguing in this thread: the notion of "causality" is (quoting from above) "merely a nominal concept that was invented to help solve a specific problem."

Lack of understanding this, "causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion".

What the First Cause actually does is "project the products of extensive abstraction back onto experience." In other words, it abstracts "Causes" and then pretends that we actually experience "causes" when in fact what we experience is serial events, one after the other.

I suppose you will next tell me that I am wrong and do not know what Pragmatism is. You would be wrong.

Now I really am done.

[mfbukowski]

Some of my thoughts on the "first cause" can be found in this thread.

Yes, I remember that discussion, and I didn't want to call you on it, but the notion of Biocentrism which you seemed to like there is a position which I like very much and seems to me to be incompatible with all your talk of "essence" etc on that thread, as well

I will quote from the article you posted and liked, and will underline points similar to those I brought up right on this thread, and specifically were ridiculed on the Craig video:

The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves.

This insight snapped into focus one day while one of us (Lanza) was walking through the woods. Looking up, he saw a huge golden orb web spider tethered to the overhead boughs. There the creature sat on a single thread, reaching out across its web to detect the vibrations of a trapped insect struggling to escape. The spider surveyed its universe, but everything beyond that gossamer pinwheel was incomprehensible. The human observer seemed as far-off to the spider as telescopic objects seem to us. Yet there was something kindred: We humans, too, lie at the heart of a great web of space and time whose threads are connected according to laws that dwell in our minds.

Is the web possible without the spider? Are space and time physical objects that would continue to exist even if living creatures were removed from the scene?

Figuring out the nature of the real world has obsessed scientists and philosophers for millennia. Three hundred years ago, the Irish empiricist George Berkeley contributed a particularly prescient observation: The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which the cosmos is apprehended. Color, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our head, not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.

For centuries, scientists regarded Berkeley’s argument as a philosophical sideshow and continued to build physical models based on the assumption of a separate universe “out there” into which we have each individually arrived. These models presume the existence of one essential reality that prevails with us or without us. Yet since the 1920s, quantum physics experiments have routinely shown the opposite: Results do depend on whether anyone is observing. This is perhaps most vividly illustrated by the famous two-slit experiment. When someone watches a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through the slits, the particle behaves like a bullet, passing through one hole or the other. But if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave that can inhabit all possibilities—including somehow passing through both holes at the same time.

Some of the greatest physicists have described these results as so confounding they are impossible to comprehend fully, beyond the reach of metaphor, visualization, and language itself. But there is another interpretation that makes them sensible. Instead of assuming a reality that predates life and even creates it, we propose a biocentric picture of reality. From this point of view, life—particularly consciousness—creates the universe, and the universe could not exist without us.

In other words, if the tree falls in the forest it does not make a "sound".

I can hear Craig chuckling in the background!

So are "causes" essences which exist "out there" or are they all in our collective minds? Do we create them definitionally and arbitrarily in our minds- or are they "out there"?

What do you think?

[Mudcat]

I am a Pragmatist. Pragmatists don't get along with logical positivists.

If we can come up with 10 more of these Bukowski, we can replace horoscopes altogether for philososcopes and make a mint to boot.

It might help if we combined the two concepts for a few years and said something like

Uranus is rising in the west and pragmatists won't get along with logical positivists. Objecitivists think your entitled because of your labors. A special Utilitarian has you on their mind. Your lucky numbers are 6, 3, and infinity -42.

edit add.. and we need a smart phone app to go with it.

[WalkerW]

Yes, I remember that discussion, and I didn't want to call you on it, but the notion of Biocentrism which you seemed to like there is a position which I like very much and seems to me to be incompatible with all your talk of "essence" etc on that thread, as well

Edit: Nevermind. Thought the second part was responding to someone else.

[WalkerW]

I am a Pragmatist. Pragmatists don't get along with logical positivists.

Neither does Craig or Feser.

[mfbukowski]

If we can come up with 10 more of these Bukowski, we can replace horoscopes altogether for philososcopes and make a mint to boot.

It might help if we combined the two concepts for a few years and said something like

Uranus is rising in the west and pragmatists won't get along with logical positivists. Objecitivists think your entitled because or your labors. A special Utilitarian has you on their mind. Your lucky numbers are 6, 3, and infinity -42.

edit add.. and we need a smart phone app to go with it.

HMMMMMMMMMM

Not bad! Not bad at all!!

[WalkerW]

What do you think?

In classical theism, the "uncaused cause" is in fact conscious and intelligent. So, I don't see it as being contradictory necessarily. This is where "intelligence" would come into play in Mormon theology.

Philosopher Keith Ward provides a fairly good summary (starting at 4:06):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAvA3iag7Ek&feature=related

[WalkerW]

The whole element and intelligence combining for a "fulness of joy" is starting to intrigue me...

[mfbukowski]

Edit: Nevermind. Thought the second part was responding to someone else.

I saw it before you edited it- so you understand the incompatibility?

Essentially the question is whether or not things like "essences" or "causes" or abstractions are "real" - ie have an existence outside of the realm of human ideas, and exist independent of humans or if they are "only in our minds"

I would agree with Pragmatists and Biocentrists (as per Lanza) and with that such things have no "reality" independent of human experience or humans in general. In other words such things exist "in our heads" and not "out there"

For a "First Cause" to actually start the universe- it must exist "out there" as a "real" thing capable of acting on matter- which per that view also exists "out there".

On the other hand, I think that "causes" in general are just ideas- arbitrary definitions which do not exist independent of humans. The are essentially linguistic concepts which would not exist without language.

Logical positivists on the other hand, believe that every statement should be verifiable by objective experience and take on a correspondence theory of truth. That is the key difference between my position and that of the positivists - I do not believe that experience "corresponds" to "reality"- I think that it IS what we call "reality"

So the positivists are very similar to most of the atheistic scientist guys on this board- like Foxtrot, Tarski et al.

Pragmatists are radical empiricists- that means that experience is all we can know- that there is no "external world" outside of what we see and feel and know from experience.

I think you cannot even talk about "reality" because the very use of language itself can refer only to experience. In a sense, language only refers to itself- not "reality" because there is no reality other than what our human brains create through our perceptions.

It is human beings who give order to the universe- as implied in Biocentrism. If it wasn't for the human brain, what humans know through that marvelous instrument, could not be said to "exist"

So when Craig attacks the positivists he is attacking (approximately) a "Tarski" or "Foxtrot", but my position is very different from that.

I do not believe in a correspondence theory of truth, but in a modified coherence/semantic theory of truth.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/

[mfbukowski]

Neither does Craig or Feser.

Yep- and he's right- I agree with this one. Good summary of positivism.